Because of you, 400 locally constructed solar ovens empower 3,120 refugees to lead healthier, safer lives.
Kakuma Refugee Camp and Kalobeyei Settlement, Kenya, is home to approximately 200,000 refugees.
Families here rely on wood & charcoal fires for cooking. Cooking this way leads to health and safety issues, mainly for women and girls responsible for cooking. It also perpetuates deforestation and air pollution, which lead to climate change.
See how you are helping to change life for refugees by providing life-saving locally manufactured solar cookers.
How you save the lives of refugees while protecting forests
1. Meet Fatuma and her Family
Refugees like Fatuma survive on less than USD 1.90 a day to provide for a family of nine. When she cannot afford charcoal or wood for cooking, she and her kids must risk attack while collecting wood, or she must barter some of her precious food rations for cooking fuel. Cooking with polluting fuels leads to deforestation and creates toxic household air pollution that kills more people than malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS combined - EVERY YEAR!
3. A New Life for Fatuma Begins
Fatuma joins other families to receive training before taking home her new solar oven to embark on her solar cooking journey. SCI consistently has more families interested in receiving a solar cooker than it can provide cookers for. Families at this distribution point feel fortunate to have benefited from your kind generosity.
5. Lives Saved by You
Refugee trainers visit new solar cooks in their homes to provide additional support. Refugees like Fatuma report how thankful they are for their new solar ovens. They can provide food for their families while not risking their lives. One woman shared that the cooker came to her rescue. In the past, she could not afford to barter food or buy fuel. Her only choice was to risk being attacked while fetching firewood from the forest. If not for the help of the solar cooker, she says she might have lost her life by now.
2. Benefits from Local Manufacture of Solar Cookers
You help employ Kenyans as each cooker is manufactured in Kenya using locally sourced materials. Solar ovens are built specially to withstand the harsh weather conditions at the camp, and they accommodate the types of food available in the camp as well as the local cooking culture. Each cooker will last ~15 years and can save one tonne of wood from being burned - EVERY YEAR.
4. Empowering Refugees Through Training and Education
You empower female refugee leaders to share their success in solar cooking to lift up others. Successful refugee solar cooks like Rebecca provide training to families. Refugee women trainers are critical to the program’s success as they understand the foods, culture, and languages common in the camp and how families can successfully transition to solar cooking. You changed Rebecca’s life by providing a solar oven. Now she works hard to help her neighbors.
6. You Create a Better Future For All
With ZERO emissions solar cooking, women and children breathe cleaner air and save trees from being cut down. On average, a refugee family saves USD ~70.00 a year, helping them buy more food and other basic needs rather than cooking fuel. Every meal cooked in a solar cooker saves lives and helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cooking fires. You better the lives of refugees while fighting deforestation and climate change with your visionary giving.
Each solar oven has the potential to last 15 years and provide nearly 100,000 individual meals to a family over its lifetime.*
Reasons why refugees would like a solar cooker:
"Solar does not spoil environment unlike using firewood."
- Athumani, Program Participant
"Buying charcoal is costly. When I lack money, I stay without cooking."
- Hamisi, Program Participant
"I don't want to cook in smoke, and getting firewood is hard."
- Mayom, Program Participant
"It causes accidents when one steps on the wood and it's very smoky."
- Monica, Program Participant
Photo credits: Eco Impact Hub and Ecomandate Foundation (unless otherwise stated).
The personal details of program participants may have been changed for their protection.
*According to SCI's Adoption and Impact Survey of the current participants in this initiative at Kakuma Refugee Camp, the average household size consists of 7.3 members. The total number of meals a solar oven can provide is calculated considering 3 meals a day for 300 days a year (the average number of sunny days per year) over 15 years.
Additional Resources:
- Hear from guest speakers from the Central African Republic, Kenya, and South Sudan about the immense potential of solar cookers for vulnerable communities at SCI's event at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW68) Forum
- SCI Strategic Partnerships Manager Keith Wingeard talks about the importance of clean cooking solutions at the COP28 Press Conference
- Watch SCI's Side Event at the United Nations High-Level Political Forum 2023