50000 trees/year for a self-reliant rural Senegal

Dear Friends,

We at CREATE! thank you for your continued support of our reforestation program in rural Senegal.

While reforestation is an important part of CREATE!’s sustainable development projects to combat droughts and desertification, there is another aspect of our work that happens alongside our tree planting campaigns to tackle the challenges of climate change induced deforestation. Today, while our communities are preparing for their 2024 reforestation campaign where we again plan to plant 30,000 trees, I want to talk to you about this other program we initiate with all our partner communities: improved cookstoves, a more environmental and human-friendly design of traditional wood-burning cookstoves.

In a country like Senegal, in the absence of better alternatives, rural communities still depend on firewood for cooking. It is illegal to cut down trees to meet this need, as it should be. But this also means that the women from these regions either have to buy firewood at a high price or spend hours in the nearby woodlands to collect fallen branches and sticks to cook meals for their families. The traditional three stone open fire cookstove that people from these regions usually use need a lot of firewood daily to cook a basic meal. As Mariame, a young woman from the village of Keur Daouda mentions, “When I used the traditional open fire, I spent much wood because the wind was coming from anywhere and it wasted the firewood quickly.”

CREATE!’s improved cookstove, being mindful of the need for firewood for cooking and the lived environment of these communities, are designed to reduce firewood usage by more than 60%. They are also completely free to build, using all local materials like clay, sand, dry grass, and water. CREATE! technicians teach members of the community, particularly the women, how to make these stoves. They also encourage them to teach others and spread the technology throughout Senegal’s villages. The improved cookstoves enable women to prepare meals using their usual methods and pots more safely and efficiently than on traditional open fires. Mariame now uses only two pieces of firewood daily to prepare an entire meal. This is possible because the fire in these stoves are contained entirely inside the stove design with a small outlet for smoke. Because improved cookstoves reduce firewood consumption by 60-70%, community members are helping to reduce deforestation

CREATE!’s field technicians partner with agents from Senegal’s Department of Water and Forestry to identify villages that express interest in our improved cookstove training and participatory approach. Based on that list, our technicians hold improved cookstove construction, usage and maintenance trainings in dozens of communities each year. We then gauge potential partners’ commitment to our approach by returning one month after the training to determine how many women have built their own improved cookstove and have spread that knowledge to others. Based on that commitment, we partner with communities for the rest of our development program, including the reforestation program.

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At CREATE!, our philosophy has always been that solutions to the challenges faced by rural villages in Senegal do not need to come at an environmental or social cost; rather, responsible and long-lasting changes can be made that benefit local communities as well as the local environment. Combining our cookstove training program with our reforestation program is just one way in which we put our philosophy to action. We thank you all for your continued support that has enables us to do so.

Links:

• Here is a step by step guide to cookstove formation
• A blogpost on a cookstove training CREATE! did in The Gambia