The mission of the organization is to promote appropriate technologies thereby strengthening the capacity of rural poor communities responding to their basic needs by creating better opportunities to improve the livelihood and improve the socio-economic condition of the rural population.
Contact Information
Currently we are working in the high hill region of Nepal. Our target population is the poor people living in High Montain Area of Nepal. We are mainly focused with Indigeneous groups of Nepal. We have experience working with STARIC Nepal, SNV, National Structures, Community Level Clubs and Business Groups in dissemination of our stoves.
Our Experience And Interest In The Four PCIA Central Focus Areas
We are addressing the social/cultural barriers through awareness raising campaigns targeted to the population. We are developing new stoves also with reference to their social need and cultural behaviors. It has been very difficult for us to intervent our new stoves which need some social and cultural changes but we are working on it with awareness campaign and also with the help of local youth groups and clubs.
We are consultants and have our own workshop for making our products. Although we have small workshop we are mainly focused in developing new stoves, ,manufacturing small volumes and then marketing to the villages. Uptill now we have sold very few stoves between 100 to 200 and all are rocket stoves. But we are trying to produce high volume stoves in future expanding our manufacturing capabilities. We have manufactured and marketed lots of stoves from other organisations like local NGOs and INGOs too. Basically the cost of Metal ICS for High Hill areas are expensive so it is being difficult to market them withour subsidy. Recently Government of Nepal has alocated subsidy policy in Metal ICS too. Government is in process for identifying the appropriate design of Metal ICS for Nepal and our stoves are also in the list. If our stoves are also selected, we are planning to market the stoves throughout the country and sell them with micro credit mechanism. We have already started working to develop community markets for stoves and other renewable energy components powered by Micro Credit Mechanism with a National NGO called STARIC Nepal. Further we are also working in economic generation activities in villages so that they can pay back the loan with the economy generation activities which they can do with the saved time for fuel collection.
We just completed a project call Healthy Home project in gatlang village of Nepal. The project was funded by Practical Action Nepal. The project included:Study on household energy status, cooking behaviors and indoor air pollution, household environment and infrastructures, services, sanitation, drains, household waste etc. Preparation of Improvement Plans on above mentioned aspects. Implementation of Improvement Plans in selected Households which also included intervention of smoke hoods in traditional stoves to ease smoke out of room. We are also improvising Uganda Two Pot stove to make it appropriate for nepalese cooking behaviors. We have successfully tested improvised Uganda 2 pot stove with new water pasteurizing Unit fixed with it in 2 households near kathmandu. We are also trying to develop metal stoves which can be used for multiple purposes like cooking, lighting, room heating , water pasteurizing as well as drying too.
As we have already mention, we just finished Healthy Home project in Rasuwa. In that project, indoor air pollution was also included and we worked in partnership with funding INGO Practical Action Nepal. We were also involved in technical Quality Monitoring of Improved Cooking Stoves (ICS) in Nepal as a consultants for STARIC/N funded by AEPC/ESAP. Till now we have not undertaken detail measurement and monitoring of IAP as we lack knowledge in this field but we have decided that in future we will have advanced technology and train our experts in Indoor air Pollution exposure and health monitoring. Our Project officers and Research Officers are participating in various national workshops and forums like PCIA on IAP and Health monitoring to build there capacity and then transfer i to other officers too.
Relevant Publications or Studies
Baseline Survey of Gatlang Village, Rasuwa, Nepal - funded by Practical Action Nepal Rural Household improvement technologies. Case Studies of five villages of Nepal regarding the tradtional cookstoves and cooking behaviors.
Our Contribution to the Partnership
Our organization can participate in the Partnership in various ways. We are consultants and manufacturer of ICS. We have already studied lots of villages and also developed few designs fo ICS which we can share with other members of PCIA. Besides PCIA is one of the resource center and networking partner for us. We have learn a lot and shared lots of information via PCIA website. Our organization can contribute our work experiece to this partnership too. Our organization is youth led organization and we are working with lots of youth organization in Nepal in the field of rural development and renewable energy. We are also planning to establish a national forum of Nepal for all the interested partners and individuals working in Indoor Air Pollution and Improved cook stoves. We also proposed this thing in PCIA bangalore asian network meeting.
