2020 End of Year Newsletter

Refugee family receiving ecooker ECOA

Merry Christmas and all the best for 2021!

 

We are currently wrapping up the last bits of our work for 2020 and wanted to take the time to give you a summary of our year, and of course, thank you all very much for all your support. This year has been challenging for everyone in so many ways, most certainly for families living in crisis affected, displaced marginalized areas.

 

As many of you already know from the articles published by the Clean Cooking Alliance, families exposed to air pollution, typically caused from burning firewood and charcoal to cook their meals, have a higher risk of dying from viruses like COVID 19. Exposure is particularly high among women and children who spent most their time near cooking fires and collecting firewood. This has put even more pressure on us at Pesitho, to provide access to an affordable and clean energy for cooking, with our ECOCA stove.

 

We are doing our absolute best to achieve our goal, and thankfully have incredible partnerships who are helping to make this happen. Just as many of you, we have had to adjust the way we work.

 

We switched to online meetings and phone calls with partners, and most recently, set up online technical training of our staff in Uganda. This meant we have been able to continue with project as much as possible. You can read more about our changes during Covid, here. So overall, how did our year look?

 

Version 2 of our ECOCA has finally been launched. Moving forward, we will be installing an upgraded version of our solar powered electric stove. Our wonderful technical team adjusted our ECOCA pot to reflect the feedback given to us from our pilot study in Uganda.

 

We finalized our MECS-TRIID funded report with Aarhus University which reviewed emission reduction of ECOCA households from our pilot study at the Bidibidi Refugee Settlement in Uganda.

 

As part of a special Easter celebration, we held our first donation campaign of ECOCA stoves with Caritas Denmark. World Food Programme released a summary of our project collaboration in Burundi as part of the WFP Innovation Bootcamp. Together with Caritas Denmark and Caritas Uganda, we celebrated Earth Day 2020 reflecting on the impact our ECOCA stove has on deforestation.

 

We also announced our exciting new partnership with Gorilla Habitat, a US based organization that is providing technical solutions to preserve the habitat surrounding the Virunga Mountains, home to the remaining 1000 mountain gorillas.

 

Finally, we announced our very first ECOCA cooperative with Caritas Denmark, that will be based outside of the Bidibidi Refugee Settlement, of which we hope to update you more in 2021. Even though we have faced many challenges, we are grateful for the opportunity to apply our skills as best we can to provide our ECOCA stove as a means of affordable and clean energy for cooking to those who need it most.

 

We are feeling positive about 2021 and cannot wait to share more with you then.

Thank you to all our wonderful partners for all your incredible work. And of course, to everyone that has been supporting our journey and mission. We wish you all a wonderful Christmas and New Year’s.

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