Stoves: Your donation provides a 'Jiko Fresh' cookstove to a marginalized family. Jiko means stove in Swahili!
Fuel type: Charcoal.
Number of stoves donated to date: 101
Location: The Cheery Children Educatin Centre in Kibera, Kenya.
Benefits: Valuable time and fuel savings, learn more below!
Need for Cookstoves
Education is the most powerful transformational tool across the globe, through education the cycle of poverty can be broken. However, for low-income families in developing countries sending children to school can be a hardship on the family.
Parents in Kibera often struggle to earn enough money for fuel and feeding their family, let alone to pay school fees as well. In addition, children perform many daily tasks to support the household like watching younger siblings and helping in the kitchen. School hours and homework means less time assisting with household chores, which creates more demand on the parents. In addition, preparing meals is a very time consuming and expensive venture for these families, who prepare their meals on open flames, utilizing wood or charcoal on 3-stone fires or inefficient cookstoves.
Cheery Children Education Centre is an academic institution located in Kibera which provides a valued educational program as well as assistance through donations to help cover costs for uniforms, books and tuition.
The principal of the school, Jairus Makambi, randomly selects a child’s name from the enrollment roster. The winning parents are then invited to the school, where EcoZoom performs a stove demonstration and presents each family with a brand-new charcoal cookstove!
EcoZoom’s Donate A Stove Program thanks the parents for encouraging and supporting their children to attend classes at the school. The EcoZoom cookstove relieves some of the burden of the family by reducing the cost of fuels (by 70%) and providing a more efficient cooking system!
About Kibera
Kibera is an area of Nairobi with population estimates varying from 500,000 to well over 1 million inhabitants. Most of the slum residents live in extreme poverty, earning less than $1 a day. Unemployment rates are high, there are few schools and most people can not afford an education for their children.
An EcoZoom charcoal stove can save a family 20,000 Kenyan shillings per year on fuel expenses! This is equivalent to around 200 USD, which can pay for a whole year of schooling for one child. It may not seem like a lot, but this is a huge cost saving for the average family living in Kibera.
Together we can help break the cycle of poverty through educational opportunity.