Sunseed Tanzania Trust (STT) works with people in arid regions to help them improve the quality of their lives and their environment, through research, development and dissemination of low-cost, sustainable appropriate technologies and techniques. We are currently running a Domestic Energy Project in Dodoma region, Tanzania with three local partners. Nearly everyone depends entirely on wood for all their fuel needs and women cook indoors over '3-stone' fires so are exposed to smoke and suffer associated health problems. We are teaching women how to make and use heat retention cookers - HRCs (hayboxes/baskets) and mud stoves with chimneys. Some of the HRCs are made of mud and straw and are attached to the stoves. These technologies save fuel and also reduce indoor air pollution. They are simple and effective and if made by the owners themselves cost no money which is important as many rural women have no cash at all. The project began in 2000, with a pilot in 1999. It is now in its 2nd phase which includes planting trees suitable to harvest for fuelwood. Our partners are working in 30 villages and hope that by 2006 5,000 HRCs will have been made.
Contact Information
Our Focus
Tanzania. Mainly rural and peri-urban low socio-economic status women. Community level.
Our Experience And Interest In The Four PCIA Central Focus Areas
We found that there were social/cultural barriers to using solar cookers, but no such resistance to heat retention cookers and stoves with chimneys.
We do not market them in the sense of selling them commercially (though a few stoves and HRCs are made by project participants and sold to others for a very small profit). If we did most of our beneficiaries simply could not afford them as they are in a subsistence economy. Our partners introduce the concept of improved cooking technologies to groups of women in 'sensitisation' meetings and then teach small groups of women to make and use the HRCs and stoves. They in turn teach other women and word quickly spreads by word of mouth - the only problem we have with regard to the 'market' is that there are more people wanting to be taught how to make and use the technologies than we have the capacity to serve.
For part of the year space heating is sometimes required, and for that people generally prefer to use a traditional '3-stone' fire. Ventilation is not part of our activities though traditional houses could do with more of it!
We do not currently monitor either indoor pollution exposure or health with technical measurements as we do not have the capacity to do so. We rely on observations and project participants' reports. We would like to be able to monitor these properly but do not currently have the resources.
Relevant Publications or Studies
None noted
Our Contribution to the Partnership
We would like to exchange information with other organisations working on similar projects. We have experience of disseminating improved cooking technologies successfully to women in rural areas and can advise about how we do it. If any other partners can help us with monitoring indoor pollution exposure and health we would be very grateful.
