What you can do to promote solar cooking

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Last edited: 23 March 2015

The Solar Cookers International Network (SCInet), which is sponsored by Solar Cookers international (SCI) in Sacramento, California (and funded by the Agua Fund), is a loose network of 500+ solar cooking promoters around the world. This is a person-to-person grassroots effort. That's why you can make a difference in many ways. Thanks in advance for doing your part. Here is how you can participate:

Personally

• Educate yourself - Read the documents presented here in the Solar Cookers International Network possibly starting with Introduction to solar cooking.
• Build your own solar cooker and become proficient in cooking with it.
• Contribute to the Solar Cookers International Network, - Add to an existing article or create a new one. If you are new to wikis, check out the Tutorial, and then be bold and jump in! Questions? Write to Tom Sponheim at webmaster@solarcooking.org. Here is our lists of tasks that we would like to complete.
• Join SCInet.
• See Volunteering

Socially

• Help friends, family, and community members to start solar cooking - Once you've made yourself some cookers, make some to give away as gifts, preferably with one or more suitable pots or cooking jars, an oven bag (if needed), and some instructions for use. Make some more to donate to raffles or auctions for environmental or humanitarian causes. People who cook with sun are more likely to promote suncooking enthusiastically. If you help the people around you to get suncooking it will help the whole world get there.
• Network with NGOs and individuals already promoting solar cooking in your country.
• Become an advocate - Introduce solar cooking to people who can encourage its spread to the people who need it most. Urge leaders and policy makers to support sustainable energy solutions. See our article on promoting solar cooking. Talk about it every chance you get. Any time someone says "how've you been" or "what have you been up to?" you have an opening. Learn to use those openings.
• Friend-raising - Help your friends become friends of SCI. If each of us gets one new member, our strength and activities can double.
• Solar cooking demonstrations - at public events, for school children and youth groups, for special friends in your home. With advance notice, SCI can send display photos and brochures by surface mail. Remember, though organized demonstrations are a very good thing, demonstrations can be informal as well. If you picnic in a park and use one or more solar cookers to prepare your meal, you are demonstrating. If you have the choice at home, and security is not a big issue, cook where people will see your cookers as they drive or walk by. There are many ways to "demonstrate." Giving out small samples of delicious suncooked foods is yet another way of demonstrating.
• Direct participation - There are ways to directly participate in such training; solar cooking and building skills are desirable but not essential. These opportunities generally require that you pay your own travel and living expenses as well as contribute to the project costs. For more information on this, contact Solar Cookers International directly.

Financially

Solar Cookers International is the sponsor of this site. Your donations help support this work. You are urged to also donate to local NGOs in your country.

• Donate online: Donate to Solar Cookers International. All donations may be tax-deductible in the United States through Solar Cookers International, a 501-c-3 not-for-profit organization (Tax ID 68-0153141).
• Buy from Amazon.com Shop at Amazon.com and 0.5% of your payment will be donated to SCI. Just use this link and shop as you normally do: Support SCI with your Amazon Smile purchase.
• Good Search / Good Shop- Search the web with GoodSearch.com and each time you do a search, GoodSearch will donate a penny to our cause! Shop online at GoodShop.com and a percentage of each purchase will be donated to our cause! More than 600 top stores are participating including Amazon, Target, Staples, Best Buy and more! Code for inserting a Good Shop banner
• Fun(d)-raising - Your group or community can support SCI, AND have fun too. Creative events people have organized include community Solarbrations, Sol Food pot-lucks and Sun Runs. Please see these ways that schools and young people have raised money for our work.
• Sell items on eBay! SCI is a certified charity on eBay, which means you can help fundraise for us. Visit our eBay charity page for more information.
• Contact SCI's Sacramento, California office to discuss these or other options.

Online

• Join the SCInet Facebook group - Discuss solar cooking with people from around the world.
• Participate in research.
• Translate educational materials - If you can offer assistance in translating pages, please contact Tom Sponheim at webmaster@solarcooking.org.
• Add a link to the Solar Cookers International Network Wiki on Facebook, Twitter, your blog, etc.
• Write About It! - You do not necessarily have to be a professional writer to get an article into small publications. Many communities have a free paper that is primarily want ads but also includes small articles of seasonal or local interest. Such publications might welcome a small article on the joys of solar cooking or instructions for making and using a simple solar cooker. Do you belong to an organization that has a newsletter? Can you get a small piece about the work that the SCInet members are doing into your church newsletter? Do you work for a company that has an in-house newsletter that might welcome a contribution? What other opportunities can you find? Consider whether it is a publication that would prefer an article slanted towards hands-on use of the technology or one that details some of the humanitarian or environmental aspects of solar cooking. Do your best to write clearly and simply, using proper spelling and grammar to the best of your ability. Include the URL for the SCInet Wiki so readers know where to go for further information. Proof carefully before submitting your piece, and if you find you really enjoy writing about solar cooking and would like to improve your writing skills and try for bigger markets with wider readerships (these will also pay you for writing!), you can get lots of free writing help at Forward Motion Writers.

See Also

• Promoting solar cooking
• Organizing Solar Cooking Events
• International Solar Cooking Holiday
• Solar Cookers International
• Volunteering