Provide Solar Stoves for Tibetan Families
- Projects:
- 106
As part of their holistic approach to development, Machik has partnered with Kahm Kampo Association that will help provide solar-cookers to families in the eastern region of the Tibetan plateau who would not otherwise be able to obtain them. Your support of this project will introduce an important ecologically sustainable practice into rural communities while improving women’s health. Many families in urban areas like Lhasa already use solar cookers; with your help, poor rural families in eastern Tibet will also realize the benefits of this simple technology.
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The Need
While people in many parts of the developing world have traditionally burned wood for their cooking fires, this method is now contributing to negative consequences for rural communities. Particulate pollution from the black soot emitted from wood fires is extremely unhealthy for human lungs, and this health hazard disproportionately affects women who on the Tibetan plateau are typically responsible for tending the household’s fire and managing the cooking. In addition to the toll on human health, the environment suffers two adverse consequences of wood-burning stoves: Gathering wood for fires is contributing to the Tibetan plateau’s ongoing problem of deforestation; and black soot from cooking fires has been deemed the number two source of CO2 greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
Additionally, the solar coolers are manufactured ethically by a company that hires economically disadvantaged people and pays them fair wages. The cookers are made from simple everyday materials that are cheap and recyclable so your support also promotes jobs for disadvantaged people and an ethically made product made of recycled materials.
About Machik
Partner since September, 2008
Machik works to help chart new pathways forward as communities on the Tibetan plateau approach uncertain times. They work directly with local Tibetan communities to help overcome many uncertainties. Their programs include education (rural, urban, primary to middle school, college scholarships, vocational training), women’s initiatives (education for girls and young women, women’s literature and publishing), conservation (solar technologies, greenhouses, clean water), social entrepreneurs (film-makers, health workers, etc), and income generation (incense, motorbike repairs, tourism, etc.). By providing new resources, networks, tools and technology, Machik's goal is to establish a portal for developing new partnerships that can help create alternative pathways toward a strong, healthy, and more sustainable future on the Tibetan plateau. Through outreach efforts to Tibetans, Chinese, and global citizens alike, they seek to build a shared understanding of the potential of their work for a collective future. Machik’s Ruth Walter Chungba Primary School (CPS), now in its seventh year of operation, has set a new standard for rural Tibetan primary education in Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.
