Rotary Club of Fresno

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In 1994 Wilfred Pimentel of the Rotary Club of Fresno started a solar cooker project with the Nairobi East Rotary Club in Kenya. Fuelwood shortages in areas heavily populated by rural, disadvantaged poor are a growing and major problem in Africa. Use of the sun's energy to cook food was a natural for Africa where sunshine is prevalent.

The Rotary Club of Fresno Solarcook Project teaches and trains women from families who previously had prepared their meals over a fire to use the simple technology solar cooker. The solar cookers come in many different varieties; sizes and shapes are to be manufactured in Africa. The cooker is a basic, portable affordable way to prepare meals. Interested women are given a workshop by local trainers that include food preparation, cooking, nutrition, hygiene and sanitation. For a small fee, the women are given a solar cooker. Since searching for fuelwood, which is a declining resource, consumes enormous amounts of time, the introduction of solar cookers has been seen as a major change in lifestyle.

Since that time, the Rotary Club of Fresno Solarcook project has spread throughout Kenya, Uganda and Sudan. Ethiopia, Eritrea, Rwanda, and Tanzania are still to be addressed. Matching grants from Solar Cooking International and other Rotary clubs in District 5230 have made this project possible. Girl Guides from the countries involved in the project are now helping with the teaching and training. Ghana, Turkey and Mexico will be added to the project. Ghana is especially concerned about Guiena worm infestations in unclean drinking water. Solar cookers can pasteurize unclean water. To date we have completed $260,000 in matching grants for Solar Cooker projects. This money comes from Rotarians from all over the world in addition to our District and Club.

[Text for this page was taken from http://www.fresnorotary.org/view_page.asp?nodeid=33&parentid=0&moduleid=1 on July 24, 2007.]

See Also

• Rotary International

News and recent developments

• August 2011: the Rotary Club of Fresno has announced continued growth of their partnership program, creating alliances with overseas Rotary groups in promoting the Integrated Cooking Method. The four main ideas are to use solar cookers when appropriate, use fuel efficent stoves other times, in combination with hay baskets and WAPI water pasteurization temperature indicators.

• July 2010: Five Rotary-based organizations have joined forces to introduce solar cooking principles in South African townships, helping to alleviate poverty and improve health. The project will bring solar cooking to townships in Cape Town, and five hundred miles to the east, in Grahamstown. The Rotary Club of Fresno, in California, has been promoting solar cooker technology, using designs that are easy and cheap to make, produce no carbon emissions, avoid firewood collection and burning, and are healthier to use than conventional cooking and water-sanitizing methods. Wendi Hammond and Patti Thornton from the Rotary Club of Fresno, California, both expert trainers in solar cooking, have travelled to South Africa this past spring as volunteer trainers for the Sustainability Trust sponsored solar cooking project. More Information...
• April 2008: The Rotary Club of Fresno has a Rotary Matching Grant project near Lira, Uganda with the Rotary Club of Kampala South and an NGO called Aid Africa directed by Rotarian Ken Goyer living in Eugene, Oregon. The teaching of Integrated Cooking is in Abako near Lira and the local Director is Rosette.

Articles in the media

Print

• March 2008: Building a better Rwanda - The Fresno Bee

Audio and video

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Contact

Wilfred Pimentel
1035 East Cambridge
Fresno, California 93704
USA

Email: solarcook@att.net