Fuego del Sol S.R.L.

Globally, billions of people cook with biomass fuels, causing terrible consequences on the people cooking (predominantly women) and the children they care for. Charcoal cooking in Haiti has destroyed 95% of the lush forest, and now the forests in the Dominican Republic are decreasing as well. FdS organizes and leads ecologically minded tourists through the DR and Haiti. GeoTourists visit the FdS Sun Oven factory, and the community center of our NGO partner, Grupo Jaragua (GJ); they join the GJ staff and volunteers in Sun Oven cooking, literacy training and tree planting. Visitors experience the culture, cuisine and history of the island, including the home of Christopher Columbus’ son, and the oldest avenue in the Americas. We visit an amazing variety of animals from iguanas to flamingos.

Innovation is intrinsic to our business model, combining the best aspects of for-profit and non-profit initiatives. Our employees are rewarded for their dedication through our employee ownership program. We are inclusive, transparent, interactive and open source. We are for profit and we work with existing NGOs who share our goals, thus creating a Hybrid Network (HN). We work to bring donations to our NGO partners to further their goals, enabling them to do more business with us. Triple-Win. Our HN is uniquely extensive, diverse and effective. Though our multi-sector design, we are able to sustain profitability. One month our main income is from tourism, one month manufacturing; the next month it is providing business consulting to other organizations interested in establishing themselves in our region. The multi-sector approach creates mutually beneficial, cross pollinating income streams for FdS, allowing us to improve the lives of everyone our work touches.

FdS projects are documented with the goal of replication and scalability. Our factory has produced 400 Sun Ovens and nearly 200 of them have been distributed. Throughout our projects we follow Fair Trade standards. Our top solar chef at our distribution center is Olga, community leader and baker in Oviedo, DR. Previously, when Olga baked, she needed to pay for propane plus the ingredients. Now, she coordinates cooking in the Sun Ovens for GJ at noon, and uses the Sun Ovens in the afternoons to bake cakes to sell for her business. Olga is now on staff and travels to train leaders in other communities. Olga is featured in FdS videos. The success of our GeoTourism program is detailed at changemakers.com/node/95278.

Great care and planning are required in the introduction of new cooking technologies to communities in order to reduce the ecological, economic and adverse health impacts that traditional cooking methods have on populations in developing countries. To obtain a Sun Oven a family should be required to pay a certain fee, and participate in a certain amount of training hours and volunteer hours. The specific fees, and hourly requirements should be set by the community organization that is introducing the Sun Ovens to the community. The specifics will vary by community based on average household income, and other specific location-based factors.

It is highly recommended that the men in the family participate in the volunteer hours required to obtain a Sun Oven, because men in the family have been shown to be the most difficult to convince that solar cooking is actually an improvement for their family. The best efforts of the women in a family can be thwarted by the man of the house complaining that the food tastes different than traditional cooking methods. The fact is that solar cooking does taste different from the smoked flavor of charcoal cooking. This difference should be introduced to all family members early in the process. In families where the husband is working full time, his participation in the program can be difficult to achieve. One potential solution is regular ‘Family Days’ at the community center on Sundays. For these days food will be provided by the center to entice the entire family of program participants to come. That food will, of course, be cooked in the Sun Oven if at all possible. Such events can give the husbands in the family frequent exposure to the new style of sun-cooked food, time to receive information regarding how the Sun Oven can save the family money and time (time that can allow the food preparers to do additional income-earning activities including handicrafts while the food is sun-cooking), and the option of providing a few convenient hours of volunteer work to the center. Can the father take a turn reading to community kids during children’s hour? Can the father serve as umpire to a family baseball game that is part of the day? Is there a specific task that can benefit the center that the assembled group of men can perform for the center during the time that the food is cooking? These are examples of volunteer hours that can be credited toward Sun Oven ownership that men can perform to feel involved.

The more Sun Ovens in use in a community, the more traditional cooking behaviors and tastes can lose their exclusive hold on that community. In practicality, not every husband will be willing to participate or support the program. There will always be negative voices, male and female, who are specifically adverse to any change being introduced to the way things have always been done. The antidote to this problem is the individuals in the community who are convinced of the program’s benefits. Staff of the community center should hold a weekly chat session among participants to hear the stories of those who are working toward the program’s success. One staff role can be to maintain a growing list of people in the community who are willing to talk to those who are holding out against the program. Having fathers available to talk with other fathers, senior citizens who can talk to other seniors, and solar cooking trainers who can learn to teach others to train in solar cooking techniques are a few examples of peer-based community programs that form the building effect of a virtuous circle of benefit for all.

Cooking in the Sun Oven is different than cooking over fire. One of the key differences is the necessity to reduce the food preparer’s tendency to want to stir the food. Solar cooking is all about heat gathering and heat retention. When the door of the Sun Oven is closed, the food is heated evenly on all sides by gradually warming air. When foods are properly prepared there is no need to stir foods such as rice, stewed beans, soups or meats during the entire cooking process. When food is cooked over a fire, the pot is only hot on the bottom. The heat source is so hot that the food will burn on one side and be raw on the other if it is not stirred. Burning wood can reach 800 degrees Fahrenheit (427 C). Food cooks at 180 degrees Fahrenheit (82 C). Food does not burn until it reaches at least 450 degrees Fahrenheit (232 C), and the Sun Oven is designed to consistently stay at or below that temperature. This characteristic of Sun Oven cooking requires a change in the way people think about cooking.

The critical question we hear every time we introduce the technology is, “How long does it take to cook the food?” The overall reputation of solar cooking is that it takes an impossibly long time. This again is why any reasonable attempt at introduction and adoption must use the best technology available. The change in thinking involves at what point conceptually the process for cooking starts when traditional cooking methods are used. If the cooking process is considered to start when a person first starts looking for the wood that will be used to make the cooking fire, then the full cooking time is actually quicker with the Sun Oven than traditional methods since no wood foraging time is required for solar cooking. The other way to consider the cooking process is the amount of active time spent cooking. Since no stirring is required, the cook has more time to do other activities, including handy crafts, cleaning and childcare. This is another way to consider that solar cooking takes less time than traditional methods. It must be mentioned that these concepts need to be taught as part of the introduction program, because many future potential solar chefs are quick to criticize the new method as inferior to the methods that they already know. There are two mind-sets that need to be overcome with training and experience. One is that if people are not actively cooking by stirring the food, then they are being lazy and not being an effective hands-on cook. The other negative mindset is that people can be slow to adopt new methods that save money and time out of concern that they will seem stupid for cooking in the traditional manner if the new way is actually better. They can be sentimentally attached to the way things have always been done. All of these reactions should be anticipated and conquered through patient teaching, constant usage of the Sun Oven by the community center itself and enlisting community leaders to help deliver the message.

Previous solar cooking efforts have been hobbled by inferior technology. Advocates favored cheap cookers thinking that local families could not afford the more effective Sun Ovens. However, cheap solar cookers have interminable cooking times, and are easily destroyed by rain. Sun Ovens are durable solar cooking appliances with reasonable cooking times for large volumes of food. In 2005, Kevin Adair completed an in depth evaluation of all available solar cooking devices and concluded that the Sun Oven is the only product that could be successfully used consistently in family kitchens. Dominican and Haitian families need large cooking capacity, and reliable units. The families are primarily living in their own homes with access to may choices of cooking options. The Sun Oven is the only solar cooking appliance that our local families choose to cook with on a regular basis. We have now achieved the point that our community leaders feel direct allegiance to the Sun Oven, and are not interested in the introduction of any other variety of solar cooking option. The loyalty to previous cooking methods has now been successfully transferred to the Sun Oven. We see this as a huge success and verification that it is the unit that should be introduced in the vast majority of efficient stove initiatives.

Using a Sun Oven offsets over one ton of carbon per year, and the unit can last for over 20 years. FdS partners with the US NGO, Solar Household Energy (She-Inc.), in the GJ program. Through this partnership, US citizens can support the DR Sun Oven adoption program, and thus offset their own carbon footprint. The Sun Oven has been independently evaluated by the Dominican National Energy Commission (CNE) and certified for tax-exempt imports under Law 57-07. Additional independent research at: www.solarcooker-at-cantinawest.com/best_solar_oven.html also confirms our testing results.

By including the Stovetec biomass stoves in our process FdS is now promoting the Solar Plus Integrated Cooking System. This system combines the best of biomass cooking and solar cooking into one coordinated system.

FdS recommends and looks to be a principal contributor to the standardization of efficient cook-stoves in the Dominican Republic, Haiti and the rest of the Caribbean. This will include extensive customization of the materials for local introduction. Also, many of the performance tests need to be expanded to specifically provide a version for solar cooking appliances. Many NGOs are interested and available to participate in this program.

The principals in several of the NGOs in the region have expressed interest in applying for CDM credits, and/or informal carbon market credits, but they have felt limited by the extensively complicated process of application. A major goal of this initiative will be to create a standardized process that local groups can follow in order to effectively apply for the CDM process. The Gold Standard Methodology: (http://www.cdmgoldstandard.org/fileadmin/editors/files/6_GS_technical_do...) will be specifically engaged for this process. FdS is the first ecological cookstove company to initiate the registration process with the Gold Standard Foundation.

The Sun Oven white paper, videos, magazine articles and radio interviews are all available at: www.elfuegodelsol.com. Please give close attention to the Eco Test Kitchen and Racing with Big Oil pages. They include our latest updates.

The FdS staff is looking forward to participating with PCIA, and introducing the Gold Standard protocol in our work. This methodology must be customized for the region so that the applications meet all international standardizations and still focus specifically on regional applicable aspects. FdS is prepared to assist in this local customization. The methodology as currently written is generalized to focus on multiple activities. No one uses cook stoves as home heating units in Haiti, so asking local residents that question just proves to be confounding, and leads to mistrust of the inquiry process itself. The Haitian population is understandably wary of intervention projects. It is crucial that surveys only contain relevant information, or the cooperation of the interviewee will likely be strained. Materials will be translated into French or Haitian Creole for use in Haiti, and into Spanish when put into use in the DR. Fuego del Sol staff are fluent in English, Spanish, French and Creole.