To alleviate stress on the environment and improve the quality of life, the French NGO Bolivia Inti – Sud Soleil is working to introduce solar cookers and efficient rocket stoves in Latin America. Solar cooking is using the sun to cook food. It is a simple, safe, and convenient way to cook without consuming biomass fuel. Improvements in access to solar cookers and cleaner energy practices can make multiple contributions to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. The advantages of solar cooking for poor communities are evident: reduced use of fuelwood; reduced spending on fuels; decreased exposure to smoke, ash, and flames; and less time and energy spent collecting fuel. Since 1999, Bolivia Inti – Sud Soleil has undertaken promotion campaigns of solar cooking systems in Latin America (Bolivia, Peru, Chile and Argentina). Now 80% of the recipients of these programs assiduously use the diffused solar cookers. Each year, the French NGO provides about 2'000 solar cookers. Our main goal is to protect the environment by equipping poor people with social and technological tools that enable them to direct their own destinies.
Contact Information
Our Focus
Since 1999, Bolivia Inti – Sud Soleil has incorporated more than 10’000 solar cookers into the Bolivian, Chilean, Argentine and southern Peruvian cultures. As there is a general lack of awareness regarding alternative methods of cooking and kitchen practice, education is essential to show people that there is a way to run their home that is better for them in almost every aspect. Our community-based participative workshops involve and train community members in solar cooking. Bolivia Inti – Sud Soleil works to help the inhabitants of Andean countries by providing 5-day participative workshops through which people can obtain our solar cookers that greatly reduce the negative aspects of their current cooking methods. During these workshops, 20 volunteers from a village are selected to participate in building their own solar cookers with local materials and learn how to use them most effectively. After the workshop, four months of monitoring enables Bolivia Inti – Sud Soleil to obtain solid scientific data that validates the effectiveness of the approach and the methodology utilized. Improved health and an overall higher quality of life are major measurable benefits from their usage, while deforestation and carbon emissions are guaranteed to be significantly reduced.
Our Experience And Interest In The Four PCIA Central Focus Areas
This is a question of changing the cooking customs. The use of the solar cooker involves a total change of method: they way a cook organizes his/her day is modified, since cooking food is not immediate and requires more time. However, the solar cooker does not require as much surveillance as a stove with traditional wood, and thus saves time for the women (estimated by beneficiaries at 1 hour and 30 minutes a day). In term of food customs, it is not possible to fry food in the solar cooker box. The solar cooking is steamed cooking: it is not necessary to use oil to cook food, the meat already contains some fat. As for vegetables, they cook with much less water. The beneficiaries become aware of the necessity of integrating more green vegetables and grains into their meals. The use of the solar cooker involves a change in the organization of the preparation of the meal and in the food customs. These "cultural" barriers are quickly overcome by the advantages of this mode of cooking: no surveillance, no gathering wood, no purchase of fuel, a return of certain grains into basic diets, etc. The objective of Bolivia Inti - Sud Soleil is to work in cooperation with the local populations to overcome the cultural barriers by applying dialogue in all its projects.
In Chile and in Argentina, Bolivia Inti - Sud Soleil developed a commercial approach for the direct dissemination of solar cookers or rocket stoves, as well as craftsmen's training. Similar programs are led by Bolivia Inti - Sud Soleil in Africa including a project of craftsmen's training in Benin for 1'000 rocket stoves and in Guinea for 2'500 rocket stoves.
Considering the experience of Bolivia Inti - Sud Soleil and of the quantity of solar energy cookers, we are effectively very interested in exchanging ideas on the standardization of cookers and the positive impacts of solar cooking. Our major objective not being standardization, we deeply hope to benefit from the experiences of other PCIA members to put into practice in the Andean countries.
Bolivia Inti - Sud Soleil assures a 4 month follow-up with the families that build a solar cooker box, and a regular follow-up on a panel of families to assure the evaluation of CO2 savings. We have all the tools for follow-up, and the method of capitalization of the data which allows us to implement clear indicators on the use of the solar cookers, the financial savings realized by families, the savings of avoided CO2 etc., but we still have difficulties quantifying, following and estimating the sanitary impacts of our actions, in particular on indoor pollution. Technical support from PCIA would allow us to mitigate this and realize more precise measures.
Relevant Publications or Studies
None noted
Our Contribution to the Partnership
- workshops - proceedings - transfer of know-how
