Mixed Kitchen Style

Last school term of the year - term III - has commenced, and children are busy getting ready for their final exams that will take place next month by the end of November.

We have had several calls from various schools that requested Simoshi’s services, and we have visited some of their kitchens to measure the saucepan capacities in use and be able to prepare a quotation with the cost for replacing all with new institutional improved cook stoves (IICS).

It usually surprises us in a sad way, that many of these new schools are using a combination of 3-stone fires, together with stove constructions that have the look and feel of “improved”, but actually perform very poorly and consume a lot of firewood just as any other traditional appliance. The picture here below depicts the typical scenario of what we call a traditional kitchen, with poor ventilation, full of smoke, soot and ash flying in the air, and poor hygiene as a result inefficient firewood combustion.

At the moment we have placed the IICS order of different saucepan capacities for three new schools, and we will be sharing the pictures of their new kitchen environments very shortly.

Site Visit From The Gold Standard

Yesterday we were honoured to host our colleagues from the The Gold Standard, one of the leading standards and registries in the voluntary carbon market. CEO Margaret Kim, Director of Marketing and Communications Jamie Balantyne, and Senior Manager and Strategy Yuval Tchetchik, joined us for a full day of excitement as we visited three different schools around Kibiri.

We started the day at Simoshi’s office, where Rehema Nakyazze also joined us to talk about Uganda Stove Manufacturer Limited, the provider of our institutional improved cook stoves (IICS). We then went to a secondary school using the traditional 3-stone fires in their kitchen, before we moved to Springfields International, a private primary school that had joined our Project Activity back in May this year and are currently using the IICS. We continued to another school, this time Kibiri Catholic Primary, a government aided school that has been using our IICS since 2019.

This was an amazing experience for our visitors, as they witnessed first hand the challenges encountered when using traditional cooking practices, and the incredible positive impact that is palpable straight away when seeing the cooks in action. They were especially shocked by the improvement in air quality. They also had the chance to hear from the Head Teachers on how the firewood savings had positively impacted the school finances.

Top Rings Corrode

Taking care of an institutional improved cook stove (IICS) is crucial, because it will determine its lifetime, like with everything else. Schools might see an increase in their population, and unfortunately their financial situation is usually not good to buy new saucepans. So cooks end up overfilling the saucepans, and whether it is posho or beans they are cooking, water has salt, and when it starts boiling, food spills everywhere, corroding the top ring.

We have used the past 3 weeks to collect those top rings that needed the free repairs we provide for a 10-year period. Here below are some pictures of the cutting and welding events, with top rings that needed attention, of different IICS saucepan capacities.

For The Long Run

When we include a new school under our Project Activity, it means we will be supporting the school for the long run. We enter into an agreement whereby we commit to handhold the school for a 10-year period throughout their cooking transition.

This means we are continuously training all the cooks, at least every other month, to ensure they feel comfortable with the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS), that they follow the guidelines to take the best care and approach for health and safety on both the IICS and the kitchen environment, and to inspect the IICS condition, so a free maintenance exercise can be booked in advance for when the schools go into the holiday period.

Changing behaviours takes a lot of effort and patience. Changing attitudes do not happen from one day to another. Sometimes, our hearts are broken when the new school term starts and we see some cooks no longer employed, new faces around, whch means we have to start all over again. It is so sad to see some cooks go, because we become good friends from our continuous school visits.

Nevertheless, some of the school kitchens we have been monitoring since 2016 still have the same cooks employed preparing the daily meals. That is such a relief for us, because we know the IICS are in very good hands! We wanted to share the training sheets from one such school, in Gangu Muslim Primary School, were we still find today Adi Bosco and Sofia Ndagire, just as we did when we first installed the IICS back in March 2016 when we taught them how to move away from their 3-stone fires.

This is such an achievement to know not only how the schools continue to use the IICS without going back to traditional cooking practices, but also we support those individuals who operate the IICS throughout a long period of time, because modifying behaviour is a process, not a single event. And this eductation that happens in the kitchen is also transferred back home.

Changes Happen Everywhere

We usually explain our participating schools that the institutional improved cook stove (IICS) cannot do the job on its own. It needs from the collaborative support from everyone directly or indirectly involved in the cooking activities:

1. From the cook that directly operates the IICS and is responsible not only for preparing the food, but also taking care of their appliance, by using small firewood logs, cleaning the soot, removing the ash, and cleaning the IICS body from any food spilling that may have happened to ensure no corrosion will occur in the future.

2. The kitchen supervisor who is responsible to monitor that all the monthly training provided by Simoshi is implemented and the advice is put in place every day, no matter what.

3. The school administrators, that will follow Simoshi’s advice on anything related to the kitchen environment, as the on-going assessment of the kitchen infrastructure might need repairs, or additions such as a firewood shelter to keep wood away from the rain, saucepan covers to keep the food clean and preserve heat, kitchen tables to ensure food is not prepared from the floor, etc.

These are just some of the examples that Simoshi’s Project Officers are continuously monitoring in every school kitchen, at least once every other month, to ensure a positive transition happens when moving away from using traditional cooking 3-stone fires, and that this change is implemented in the whole kitchen environment, to achieve the best health and safety practices.

Hello September

A new month starts and of course we keep on including new schools under our Project Activity. Earlier this week we welcomed Mbogo Mixed Secondary School, a school with over 2,500 boarding girls and boys. As such, the amount of food prepared on a daily basis in enormous, and therefore the kitchens for boys and girls are separate buildings.

We are eager to share the pictures of the amazing changes this school has gone through, from using traditional 3-stone fires to the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS). Schools in Uganda are currently on holiday, and the last term of the year, Term 3, will resume on Monday 16th of September.

In the meantime, we share here below pictures from the delivery and installation of the 22 IICS of different saucepan capacities.

End Of Term 2

Today schools close doors and children will be on holidays for the next three weeks. Term 3 will resume on Monday 16 September. This is a demanding period as candidates get all the pressure as examination dates become closer!

At Simoshi, we use this holiday period to repair all the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS), a great opportunity to refurbish all damaged parts because no food is being prepared. IICS maintenance is free to all participating schools, every year, for a 10-year period.

Some schools only need repairs once a year, while other schools need attention every single holiday (three times per year). The reason for these recurrent damages found are mainly related to how the cooks operate the IICS and the water content of the firewood used. This is why it is critical to implement training sessions every other month, to ensure the best practices on how to operate the IICS are followed.

It is a lot of hard work especially when cooks leave the job and new staff is hired, buy it is gratifying to see how the behavior positively changes and it is straight away reflected on the condition of the IICS.

Continuous Monitoring

Implementing a credible project, that issues high integrity carbon credits means the project developer will thoroughly follow-up the use of the new technology that is replacing the baseline (in this case the 3-stone fires or traditional cooking appliances).

We wanted to share some analytics of the number of visits we have conducted since we first installed the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) at our first participating school, back in March 2016.

As of today, we have grown to 115 schools (both primary and secondary, day and boarding) that are currently using the IICS of different saucepan capacities to prepare the children’s daily meals.

To ensure these IICS are fully in use, that no other stove models are in place (stacking) or that the school did not go back to their traditional cooking methods, we visit each school at least 6 times every year. Various indicators are collected, with different activities performed, from training of cooks, assessment of the kitchen building and environment, maintenance of the IICS, and collection of children enrollment and firewood expenditure per school term.

This means as of today, our Project Officers have conducted a total of 11,259 physical assessments to all school during the past eight years. The breakdown is shown below and we are extremely proud to share our continuous monitoring of the project’s activities, to ensure 100% confidence that all emission reductions claimed are verifiable and real.

They Need Help

Government schools are usually in desperate need for a helping hand. At Simoshi we are always in the look for donors and grants that can assist them with the partial or full purchase of the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS).

Government aided schools are often overcrowded, and funds are always short to take care of the many infrastructural problems. Kitchens are always left unattended, which becomes a bigger problem to the school finances, because cooking with traditional stoves means higher firewood consumption and expenditures.

Here below I share some pictures from the kitchen at St. Gaviirya Primary School in Wakiso district. This kitchen is the typical set up found with a local mud and cement construction and 3-stone fireplaces used to prepare the daily meals.

We are determined to help this school improve their kitchen environment, with the purchase of 3 IICS of different saucepan capacities. Before this year ends, we will make sure there is a transformation in their cooking habits and we will share the updates as we make this wish a reality.

No Rest For Mums

Hard working mums deserve all our respect and recognition. Moreover, if that mum has just given birth, like Helen whom I found preparing the lunch at this secondary school in Kisaasi.

She is not only working hard with a one month old baby, but also struggling with a traditional cooking set up, using 3-stone fires to prepare all meals. Her newborn baby is just meters away from her, because childcare is not an option, and unfortunately exposing her baby and herself to the harmful smoke from the inefficient burning firewood.

Nearly 1 billion people in Africa are still cooking with such traditional methods, generation air pollution and causing several respiratory diseases. The good news: we will be soon installing 3 institutional improved cook stoves, that will not only save 50% of the firewood used, but also minimise the exposure to smoke as fumes will be pushed outside through the chimney pipe as the cooking starts happening inside a clean kitchen building.

Stones and Stoves

I am sharing a typical cooking set up found in schools around Kampala. Sometimes efforts are made to purchase stoves, and I refrain myself here of calling them “improved cook stoves” just because they have tiles around them. That is another topic of discussion for another post (the unfortunate situation where manufacturers still sell stoves without proper testing certification).

The kitchens have (i) a combination of stoves in bad shape because of a lack of maintenance, and (ii) traditional 3-stone fires that are easily spread inside the building. In either case, all cooking situations are dirty and harmful for the cooks. You can see in the video there is no difference in the amount of smoke released from either one. Ash is also floating in the air, and we can only wonder how hygienic can this result if it ends up in the food…..

The good news is this Teacher’s Training College will soon be joining our Project Activity, so stay tuned for the updates on the kitchen transformation.

Uncertainty versus Inaccuracy

Uncertainty is an unavoidable fact of life, and we confront this on a daily basis when making decisions with incomplete available information. Inaccuracy is often avoidable and an unforgivable misrepresentation of reality.

Carbon registered projects have an obligation to report the daily usage of the technology deployed when requesting for carbon credit issuance. Cycle credit issuance can be improved with the use of technology, which has to be aligned with the methodologies used by the project developer. How data is collected is key, there is no question about it, and how accurate that data is reported, results in high quality and integrity carbon credits.

As new technology comes into the market, and it is embedded into the standards and methodologies, at Simoshi we had implemented a more analog monitoring system at the usage point, since the very beginning back in March 2016 when the first school joined our Project Activity.

To ensure 100 % usage rate of all the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) deployed in the school kitchens, a census approach is taken, so we physically observe the IICS at least 6 times per year, while also collecting data on the name of the cooks operating them and the situation of the IICS for maintenance purposes. Then this data is entered into our Kenga IT infrastructure, that is later reconciled on a monthly basis and used for monitoring and reporting activities.

Any school that decides to include a new stove model outside the approved ones in the Project Design Document (stacking), or goes back to using a traditional 3-stone fire, is automatically disqualified and withdrawn from the Project Activity. Simoshi is the only cookstove project implementing such approach. And we have done this before the era of Internet of Things (IoT).

Today in 2024, we know exactly where our first schools are with their kitchens and IICS that were installed back in 2016. We collect so much detailed data, that we can disclose the history of who is cooking with those IICS, with name and surname (because every single cook signs our training sheets), how many children are fed, how much the school spends in Ugandan shillings on firewood every school term, and how much Simoshi spent and what was repaired on every individual IICS, for the past 8 years. These efforts are continuously deployed to ensure we achieve accuracy in our MRV exercises, while the voluntary sector innovates and evolves as a whole in the requirements needed to bring certainty.

African Carbon Credit Showcase

The first edition of the African Carbon Credit Showcase has now been released, outlining a sample of Africa’s carbon credits generation potential. Prepared by the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI), its aim is to promote a greater awareness of the diverse array of African-based high-integrity carbon credits, covering many nations of this vast continent. It aims at becoming a catalyst of progress while companies and individuals around the world embark towards net-zero targets.

Simoshi is very proud of having its Project Activity “Institutional Improved Cook Stoves for Schools and Institutions in Uganda” showcased in this collective effort. See pages 77 and 78 for further information on our work with schools in Uganda here.

Hello Lotte

Lotte Junior School joins our community of 115 schools that currently participate under our registered Project Activity with The Gold Standard. Over the past weekend, we installed 4 institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) of different saucepan capacities that will help prepare the daily school meals.

With the support from SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, the school purchased the 4 IICS with a 40% discount. These IICS are manufactured by Uganda Stove Manufacturers Limited (Ugastove) and we are proud to be able to make them more affordable with such grant.

As Simoshi, we do not make any profit from selling IICS, on the contrary, we are continuously looking for financial resources (grant, donor support and carbon finance) to lower the price and make them accessible to schools, to comfortably transition away from using traditional cooking practices. Below are some pictures of the new IICS, although the school is currently also building a new kitchen structure, so we are hoping to move the 4 IICS and make the chimney installation by the end of this year.

Quarterly Quality

Last week we had our quarterly meeting with Uganda Stove Manufacturer Limited (Ugastove) as part of our mutual efforts to provide the best institutional improved cook stove (IICS) to all participating schools.

These meetings with all the key team members from both Simoshi and Ugastove are crucial to share lessons learned from the kitchen, as we have been monitoring the use of the IICS on a monthly basis for the past 9 years!

The improvements made to the IICS are the results of the collaborative efforts from the technical department at Ugastove and the experience on behavioral change from Simoshi’s project officers.

Thank You HerzLack

Over the weekend we have installed 3 new institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) of different capacities at Namungoona Orthodox Primary School. This was possible thanks to the donation received from Herzlack, a vegan cosmetics manufacturing company based in Germany. For the past two years, they have been supporting Simoshi and government aided schools, to make sure these can move away from traditional cooking practices.

Namungoona Orthodox is a Kampala Capital City Authority aided school, with a population of 450 primary day scholars, and have spent 3 trucks of firewood during the last school term. With the new IICS installed, the school will be able to save over 500 USD of annual firewood purchases.

July Starts

A new month gets going in Kampala, and we are always moving around the city to not only monitor the kitchens of those schools included under our Project Activity registered with the Gold Standard.

We are constantly checking on schools outside our project, to learn from their cooking practices and behaviors, even when they are still using traditional methods.

New stove manufacturers come into the sector with different technologies and proposals, and understanding the user preferences is key to improving what we do at Simoshi. For example, we have seen in the past stoves powered with solar panels, and it is so unfortunate to see them broken and no longer in use, as a result of lack of maintenance. The main problem reported by the school is either broken panels, or expired batteries. Such issues could be easily resolved, if customer support was provided.

That is why, no matter which cooking technology is introduced, it is crucial to provide a 10-year warranty and maintenance service, to ensure schools do not resort back to traditional 3-stone fires ever again.

Measuring Happiness

I wish we could find a way of sharing the happiness from the cooks when they move away from using traditional 3-stone fires to using the energy efficient cook stoves to prepare the children’s daily school meals. I feel the pictures or videos are really not enough to represent the gratitude and appreciation they have for their new kitchens.

Every day we collect several indicators for all 9 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) this project activity achieves. Nevertheless, if only we had the opportunity to measure a person’s happiness :) that would be another indicator making us extremely proud.

Death By Lack of Maintenance

It is exasperating to visit schools that made an amazing financial effort to procure improved cook stoves, and end up going back to cooking with the traditional 3-stone fires after 3 years. Cooking at schools happens 9 months of the year, and the stoves are under constant fire, one of the most powerful and destructive forces in nature. Eventually, the stoves will be destroyed if repairs are not scheduled continuously.

We had to share the pictures that speak by themselves, with the cook resourcing to preparing all meals with 3 stones instead of utilizing the white tiled stove, which used to be, sometime in the past an improved cook stove, but is today just a pile of rubble, a hole with tiles shamelessly surrounding it.

The Awe Should Stop

I never stop to get surprised when I see the way schools are still cooking their daily meals. Yesterday I visited a school in Wakiso with 2,500 boarding secondary children, that is willing to move away from their traditional stoves.

I had to share the shocking pictures of the amount of firewood used. The pictures below show a saucepan of 800 litres capacity, boiling water for tea. That saucepan alone uses 4 trunks of trees to make that happen, and this is prepared every day, no exceptions. If that amount of firewood is needed to make tea alone, you can imagine the quantities wasted to prepare food. It is devastating.

A simple intervention of helping schools move away to using institutional improved coo stoves (IICS) can achieve 2 trees being saved every day for making that same tea. There are 22,000 schools in Uganda cooking like this. With children moving around the kitchens, indirectly inhaling all the smoke and pollutants from the inefficient firewood burning….