TAOS, N.M., Dec. 17, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — Household Air Pollution, from primitive cookstoves, kills 4 million people every year – more than combined deaths from Malaria, HIV/Aids and Tuberculosis.
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20131217/PH34261-a )
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20131217/PH34261-b )
People say, "I had no idea" when they hear that mind-boggling fact.
Fortunately, something is being done about this, on a global basis.
Julia Roberts, Global Ambassador, Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, says, "I strongly believe that cooking shouldn't kill, don't you?"
The Global Alliance, a public-private partnership, founded in 2012 by United Nations Foundation, World Health Organization and many governments and private organizations seeks to save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women, and protect the environment.
The Alliance is actively mobilizing high-level commitments toward their goal of universal adoption of clean cookstoves, creating a thriving global market for clean and efficient household cooking solutions.
A "thriving market" which sells high quality, efficient, clean-burning cookstoves to the world's poor is the only sustainable way that the Global Alliance's goal of fostering adoption of clean cookstoves in 100 million households by 2020 can be met. It's an ambitious, laudable and critically important effort.
Clean Cookstoves in the High Himalayas
Bringing clean cookstoves to remote and impoverished areas of the High Himalayas presents its own unique challenges, however.
Average monthly incomes of less than $20 makes it extremely difficult ("impossible," really) for a "thriving market" to be developed, to say nothing of the logistics of delivering stoves to remote, roadless mountain villages at altitudes of 14,000 feet and higher.
The Himalayan Stove Project, an "Implementing Partner" of the Global Alliance, is achieving major successes in this challenging environment.
The project: an all volunteer, humanitarian & philanthropic program is dedicated to preserving the Himalayan environment and improving the health of the people living in the trans-Himalayan region.
It donates and distributes, free, clean-burning, fuel-efficient Envirofit cook stoves, transforming lives of individuals and families who now cook with traditional, rudimentary stoves or over open fire pits inside their homes, consuming excessive amounts of precious fuel and polluting the indoor air to dangerously unhealthy levels.
The difficult and demanding work of distributing the stoves to families in the Nepal Himalayas is performed by the project's Himalayan Associates: a group of experienced and trusted organizations who have philanthropic missions which complement the project's. They are the core implementers of efficiently reaching the people who will benefit most from the stoves.
Beginning in early 2111, 1,400 stoves have been delivered, installed and are being used daily, in homes across a vast part of the remote mountainous regions of Nepal, and another 1,500 stoves are in transit, scheduled to arrive in Kathmandu in February 2014 for delivery before the torrential Monsoon rains in June.
Who supports the mission of the project?
Many wonderful and well-known sponsors have made (and continue to make) generous contributions to support the project, including Eddie Bauer, adidas, Cascade Designs / MSR, Kahtoola, Rotary International (clubs in the US, New Zealand and Nepal, and expanding), 1% for the Planet, the Halton Foundation, the American Alpine Club, Clothing Arts and many others.
How can you learn more, and how can you help?
Visit the website – http://www.himalayanstoveproject.org/
Donations are the lifeblood of the all-volunteer Himalayan Stove Project, and the generosity of the sponsors named above is important, but does not fund all the needs.
Contributions, in whatever amount – $10 or $10,000 – allow the project to continue their transformative work – "Every Dollar Helps".
The Himalayan Stove Project hopes it can count on you.
George Basch – "Chief Cook"
505-363-8863
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