I just returned from my G Adventures #AmbassadorofChange Safari trip to Tanzania, which was one of the best adventures I’ve ever been on. The safari was great, the tent camps were fabulous, and I loved seeing the wildlife in the Serengeti and meeting the locals. But an unexpected highlight of the journey was a visit to a Maasai village to see Planeterra Foundation’s Clean Cookstoves project.
When we arrived, we were introduced to the project leader, and taken around the village.
The Maasai live a simple lifestyle and their homes are constructed of mud and sticks. Each home has a stove in it which consists of a circle of stones where they burn wood for a fire. This creates smoke and air pollution in the home which contributes to health problems for the women and children who are inside during the day. I went inside one of these homes, and the smoke really was intense. We could only stay in there a few minutes.
According to the Planeterra Foundation, four million people die worldwide each year from exposure to cookstove smoke which causes cancer, pneumonia, heart and lung disease, blindness and burns. Close to half of the pneumonia deaths among children under five can be linked back to the inhalation of particulate matter from indoor smoke.
The Clean Cookstoves project helps Maasai communities replace these unhealthy stoves with more efficient and healthy ones that vent smoke to the outside of the home. It's a really simple and inexpensive fix. Maasai women build the stoves themselves, and the cost of installing one of these stoves is only about $25 US. So, with a relatively small donation, you can change the lives of an entire Maasai family.
The program trains Maasai women to install and distribute the stoves in their villages and neighboring villages. So far, the Maasai Stoves & Solar Project has trained 75 women and installed 750 stoves in in over sixty Maasai villages across the Serengeti. Each new stove removes 90% of the smoke from the homes. The program has improved women’s lives by not only improving their health, but also giving them the ability to earn an income from building stoves in the community.
To learn more about the project, visit this link: https://planeterra.org/…/our-…/maasai-clean-cookstoves-tour/
To learn more about you can take a life-changing trip like this one, schedule a call with me.