Family energy project reaches 400 households in Tanzania

08/12/11

This Summer Childreach International launched its very own East African Family Energy Project as part of its climate change initiative. This innovative project aims to provide no less than one million rural East African households with access to renewable energy services. The initiative, the first of its kind, addresses issues of education, the health of women and children, environmental degradation as well as climate change.

Working closely with local communities, the Family Energy Project offers four technologies to help people in their daily lives, including a solar cooker (winner of the Financial Times Climate Change Challenge), a renewable biomass stove (for when the sun is not shining), a solar lighting system and a solar water purification system. These technologies prevent people from having to collect or buy firewood, and remove the health issues caused by smoke, keeping children in school and reducing carbon emissions.

July of 2011 saw the project launched in the first 400 households in the Kilimanjaro region.Women in these communities in particular were victims of lung and eye diseases as a result of cooking toxic woods indoors while children often spent up to three hours a day collecting firewood, time they would usually have spent in school. An ongoing study is being conducted in these villages to measure how the project is contributing to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

Mama Neema, a widow from Old Moshi, Tanzania said “I am so happy, because usually I have to go about 10 kilometers or send to collect firewood. Also, when I light the fire and start cooking the smoke is all over my kitchen and fills my eyes with tears making them itch, giving me a headache and a cough.”

Here in the UK the technologies have received critical acclaim from leading sustainability think-tank, Forum for the Future, who has said the project “has the potential to transform millions of lives and is a model of scalable, sustainable innovation”. The Financial Times has stated “As well as reducing carbon emissions and deforestation, this cheap and simple idea could save people in developing countries time and money”.

Lewis Archer, Climate Change Progamme Manager at Childreach International said

“We’re all hugely excited about this project, it’s the first time we’ve simultaneously been able to address issues of education, health, child protection as well as climate change. The potential here is huge”

The project is also receiving support from businesses across the UK, providing East African families with these urgently needed technologies. Businesses can support the project by either donating to the project or by ‘offsetting’ their carbon emissions through the accredited project, achieving carbon neutrality at the same time as changing lives.

For more information please contact our Climate Change Programme Manager at lewis.archer@childreach.org.uk or to learn how you or your business can become part of the project click here.