0 Safe Stoves for Darfur Refugee Mothers

Dear Donars,

The Darfur Women Network (DWN) has implemented the Safe Stoves Project for the benefit of the survivors of genocide in Darfur., who crossed the border to live away from violence in refugees’ camps in Chad.

There are around 30,000 people living in the camp with, most Darfur refugees are women and children. In addition to challenges to mental and psychological wellbeing, these families are suffering from poor physical conditions resulting from the lack of access to basic social services, such as health, education, water, and sanitation. Continued conflict in the region subject these vulnerable communities to violence and a lack of protection, which consequently creates tremendous challenges to their livelihood and wellbeing. In addition to all these challenges of lack of income, food, healthcare, education, water, and protection; there is challenge of usually using traditional wood-burning cooking stoves to cook for their families. This stove consumes a huge amount of firewood. Firewood scarcity due to deforestation leaves women and girls vulnerable to walk long distance into dangerous forest where high dangerous conflict territory which put them at risk for rape and risk for hostile attacks. Also, walking long distances to collect firewood has become a burden on the women and weakening their physical ability. In addition to safety issues, smoke inhalation and fire hazards are a constant concern. Also, the economic empowerment group has earned income for making safe stoves to protect women and girls from rape, hostile attacks, and other negative impact of using traditional stoves.  

The impact of your donation is the following:

The DWN has distributed 1200 safe stoves.

The efficient safe stove reduces the number of trips and distance that women trek to collect firewood from the forest by 75%.

Open flames encourage respiratory issues and open fire hazards that can quickly ignite a shelter. It also leads to serious risks like smoke inhalation, burns to children and accidental home fires. Safe stove helps in reducing all these health hazards.

Increase and restore the preservation of the ecological system in and around the camps.

Create economic empowerment opportunities for women to earn income for themselves and their families. There is little to no way for women to earn an income which will allow them to purchase  food or basic living necessities within the camps.

The Safe Stoves Program merges income earning opportunities with filling a vital need that benefits families in the camps.

This project has helped some refugee women to transfer themselves from dependency to self-sufficiency.

The women practice decision-making, entrepreneurship skills, and teamwork which helped them to become social change agents by changing the perception of community about women.

Currently due to rainy season, the production safe stoves by refugee women have stopped because the stoves need sun to dry and there is very little sun during this period. As clay is the main material used to make stoves, it gets easily damaged in rain. We are hoping for the production to resume by the end of rainy season.

We are thankful to the students from UK university who helped us raise fund for safe stoves.

Future plan

Safe Stoves have already reduced some of the need for firewood and have made living conditions healthier by not emitting as much smoke into the homes of refugees. However, DWN wants to come up with a a more sustainable and environment friendly solution. A solar-powered pot is the idea which is in the pipeline subjected to more funding. The goals of the Solar Pot program are to greatly reduce the use of firewood and allow for food to be stirred without any heat being lost. The Solar Pot would help change that and they will become social change agents.

Your generous donation and your commitment have enabled Darfur Women Network, DWN, to address the challenge faced Darfur refugees in the camp. Please visit our project to donate: https://goto.gg/44316

Thank you

Links:

• https://goto.gg/44316