cool work stuff

The NY Times just ran this article the other day and it made me really excited because it's pretty relevant to some of the work that my organization does.

One of my favorite projects that my organization has been doing is the Clean Burning Stove Project.  Here's a video of it - it's a little sappy, especially at the end with the snotty little kid, but it gives you a better idea of what the project's like.

Since 2003, ProWorld has been implementing these stoves in the rural Andean communities throughout the Sacred Valley.  In these communities, families use an open fire to cook and heat their unventilated homes, which causes chronic pulminary disease, burns up the natural plant species, and is not all that environmentally friendly.  Each of our stoves - made entirely out of ceramic tiles for the chimney, adobe brick, and mud - ventilates the homes, burns fuel more efficiently, and releases up to 1 ton less carbon emission each year.  It's amazing the health and environmental benefits that they have, especially considering it takes maybe 30 minutes to install and they only cost a total of US$10, which includes labor and materials (ProWorld, with grant money from the Pan American Health Association, provides funding for the materials and requires that the community provide assistance with labor).  

In addition to the installation of the stoves, ProWorld also has teams of community health workers who do workshops with the communities about how the stoves are made, how they work, and the importance of proper usage.  The local myth is that the pulminary problems, or "La Toz" as they call it, are because of the constant cold in the mountains.  The community health workers will also do regular lung capacity checks.  We also do reforestation in all the communities, to replace some of the native species that were being depleted

This article came at a really cool time because we're really starting to get some recognition for our work in Latin America.  We recently sent one of our staff members responsible for the stoves project to Uganda for a conference on clean air.  There, the US Environmental Protection Agency awarded us with the 2009 Special Achievement Award for our work in Peru.  There were over 180 international organizations attending, so it was kind of a big deal, especially for a little orgnization like us.  We were all pretty stoked.

I promise to write more about our Mexico projects soon!