CO2balance are currently supporting the distribution of improved cookstoves throughout the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region in Southern Ethiopia with our partner, Vita.
As part of an initiative between Vita and the CLTS Foundation, a pilot project is being implemented in 2 communities in Mirab Abaya and Arba Minch Zuria, focusing on adapting the core principles of the Community-Led Total Sanitation approach to mobilise communities to adopt clean cookstoves.
These principles are drawn from the recognition that merely introducing new technology into communities does not guarantee their use; and that for effective adoption, the community must lead the way on ensuring behavior change.
This pioneering project will explore and identify how this community led approach – which includes identifying triggering factors and developing localised roadmaps – can be adapted to cookstoves to lead to an outcome where communities are sost gulicha (traditional cookstove) free.
The project will focus on effective education and awareness raising of the severe health impacts associated from cooking on open, three-stone fires, and detailed training on how to use and maintain the improved cookstoves, hoping to support community-led behavior change and maximise use of the improved cookstoves and the benefits they deliver.
The projects actively contribute to helping achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. We specifically target:
SDG3 Good Health and Wellbeing through reducing household pollution and the associated respiratory diseases
SDG 5 Gender Equality through reducing the burden of the domestic task of collecting firewood on women as the improved stoves require less fuel
SDG 7 Affordable and Clean Energy by increasing the distribution of improved technology to rural communities isolated from development
SDG 13 Climate Action by offsetting carbon emissions through the use of improved technology.
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