Smokeless Cookstove Foundations’ Clean energy "mud chulha(stove) making "- training program for rural community trainers at Pithoragarh in collaboration with TARE(Tirambhapur askote raj ecosystem) – A skill and livelihood initiative to address Indoor smoke pollution due to inefficient chulhas in village households

Household Air Pollution(HAP) is one of India’s most devastating killers, claiming more lives each year than HIV, Malaria and TB combined, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) figures. This amounts to 1 million premature deaths in India and more than 4 million globally.

KEY SUFFERERS OF

Maximum families have women cooking in the house:

Pregnant women: Both mother and the child are at the highest risk of suffering from incurable diseases.

Old women: Since the immune system is already low at old age, old women are easy prey to diseases.

Middle-aged women: Picking up heavy wood stocks as fuel, is largely done by this age group because of which they become a victim to HAP-based diseases. Also, their children are also affected as they are mostly around their mothers all the time.

Other family members: Are passive inhalers of the smoke caused due to cooking over open fires and inefficient stoves but since they are not around the fire all the time, the possibility is less than it is for the women and young children of the family.

Smokeless cook stove foundation in collaboration with TARE(Tirambhapur askote raj ecosystem) be conducting the smokeless mud chulha design training making -skill initiative for the villages in Uttarakhand. This smokeless, mud chulha program will help address the problem of the smoke-filled rural kitchens which indirectly hamper the health of the women in the kitchen and also the adults and kids at home.

We are willing to do this program as a train the trainer concept so the few identified key village community trainers and mobilisers can make their livelihood further after learning this skill set. We have identified Malan charma village in Pithoragarh district, Uttarakhand where we are willing to do the program and community trainers from other districts will join us in this program over here.

• We provide communities with zero-cost solutions based on Rocket Stove Technology.
• Our mud chulhas are easy to learn and easy to make, once the skill is acquired, it can provide an additional income opportunity for the community.
• Our mud-based chulahs are assembled with raw materials that are present in mother earth –mud, dry grass, rice puffs, rice husk and water.

SCF & TARE Intervention: TRAINING(Awareness building campaign & stove making using locally available raw materials)

• Creating community volunteers and equipping skills to prepare smokeless chulhas
• Construction and usage of smokeless chulhas
• Awareness, attitudes and practice towards mitigating household air pollution

OUTCOMES: EVALUATE(Monitoring & evaluation, Plan for scale)

• Increased time spent on income-generating activities
• Decreased health expenses
• Increased financial security/income
• Increased physical efficiency
• Reduction on firewood dependency and hence saving of matured trees in forests