Clean cookstove project in Nigeria – Work with Dave and Joy

Each month we donate 5% of all our new Tavala customer orders to Wea, Women’s Earth Alliance. Our customer base is growing with TAVALA (www.DaveandJoy.com) and we appreciate both our customers AND also the opportunity to have a monthly donation from that revenue.

Also our customers feel great that their order helps people and projects in need.

Our donation today was ‘ear marked’ for the “Clean CookStove” project in Nigeria.

I spent a summer in Nigeria in 1975 and lived with a host family (Chief and his family, whom I am still in touch with and friends today!) so this project truly hit home as I remember the women in the market place and on the streets preparing foods for their families and communities, as well as to sell in the market.

WEA’s motto:

When women thrive, communities and the Earth thrive. This is one of our core beliefs here at WEA because we’ve seen it to be true.

#WEA‘s partnership with WISE Nigeria aims to improve health and safety of women and reduce deforestation by training women entrepreneurs to promote and sell life-saving clean cookstoves as an alternative to traditional stoves. The work these women are doing in their communities is becoming more and more important! According to a recent report by Sustainable Energy for All “more that 70% of Nigerians use wood as their main cooking fuel, stoking deforestation.”

Reliance upon poorly ventilated cooking stoves and wood burning fuel has impacts on both human and environmental health. Without “bold market-based strategies” and significantly more international and domestic investment, “the millions of women and children who suffer and die every year from dirty cooking fuels will not diminish.”

Countless studies point to the adoption of affordable, effective, and durable clean cooking technologies as a key influencer on our planet. WEA works in Nigeria with women-led NGO, WISE, to train women in clean cookstoves entrepreneurship and to build a replicable training model for other regions. Around 93,000 people die each year of smoke-related illnesses in Nigeria, and globally 3 billion people cook over open fires, producing 2-5% of annual greenhouse gas emissions. Shifting to clean cookstoves reduces emissions while also protecting women’s health.

The training participants (in teams of two) have returned to their communities, equipped with new skills and seed grants to launch clean energy initiatives based on their business plans. They’ve hit the ground running – hosting outreach events to demonstrate the benefits of cookstoves and to motivate community members to purchase this life-saving solution. To learn more click on the link below.