Clean and Environment Friendly Cooking Solutions for Urban/Village Slum Dwellers
Globally approximately 3 billion people cook using polluting open fires or simple stoves fueled by kerosene, biomass and coal. Also every year, close to 4 million people die prematurely from illness attributable to household air pollution from inefficient cooking practices.
CARE India, with HCL Foundation as funding partner, is working for Clean and Environment Friendly Cooking Solution for Urban Slums/Village Dwellers in Gautam Buddh Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh. The overall objective of the project is to promote sustainable adoption of Improved Cook Stove (ICS) as a clean energy solution among slum/village dwellers households (SVDH).
Our aim is to capacitate 17,500 individuals from 3500 SVDH to adopt ICS as a clean energy option and to develop an enabling and supportive environment for women and their households to make a clean energy transition. This initiative is closely aligned with the HCL Uday strategy enabling sustainable development of the migratory population in urban India.
Approach during COVID – 19
While the activities halted on the groud due to COVID- 19 nation wide lockdown, we continued our work with available resources even during the lockdown period.
- We recruited field staff through video conferencing from the programme location. This helped us in interaction with community during lockdown period when restrictions of movement within village/slums lifted
- Due to restrictions in Interstate and Interdistrict tarvel, ICS Manufacturers were not able to visit the project location to interact with beneficiary and staff. We used video conferencing for the purpose of interaction between manufacturer and staff. Through these interactions project staff learned about proper use of ICS, they also shared the feedback with ICS Manufactures
- We formed messenger groups for women in the households, through which we shared good practices of clean cooking, online videos on clean cooking solutions and shared videos of ICS demonstrations
- Simultaneously awareness was raised about clean cooking energy. Wall painting was executed throughout the project locations.
To be able to efficiently execute this programme and achieve the desired outcome, we have drawn from our experience of many years in the Switch Asia project, in Odisha and Chhattisgarh, where we have successfully evolved a women centric extension model for clean cooking energy transition by poor households (HHs). The project has been part of extension model which has successfully promoted the Sustainable Household Energy Schools (SHE School), which were platforms for discussion within the village on using sustainable energy options and adoption. SHE Champions are influential members from the community who are trained and facilitate the SHE schools.
In addition, the project trained local community members to support maintenance and repair of the ICS. The project engaged with ICS manufacturers and dealers to link them with community preferences, and at the same time brought together ICS manufacturers and consumers together in special meetings. The project has successfully enabled poor HHs to switch from traditional cookstoves to ICS.
