Amazing School Events

We are very lucky to be invited to School Competitions, and have the privilege to see the children perform. This time, the special event took place at Kitebi Secondary School, with a delicious lunch served for everyone. So many guests are invited, that the kitchen cannot cope with the institutional improved cook stoves to prepare the food for such high number of people.

During such events, extra 3-stone fires had to be set outside the kitchen area to ensure food is ready for everyone on time. Fortunately, these unusual inefficient cooking days only happen three times a year!

Together We Can

This week we had a wrap up meeting with the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) on the results accrued so far from the installation of institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) in 15 KCCA primary schools. Findings included successful reductions of firewood consumption, emissions of carbon dioxide, improvements in air quality, and positive behavioral changes towards hygiene and sanitation, just to mention a few.

We had a pleasant surprise and had been honored to receive a certificate of appreciation from the Director of Education and Social Services Mrs. Juliet Namuddu Nambifor the technical support provided to such project. We are committed to continue with our join efforts in bringing cleaner cooking environments to all 79 KCCA supported schools.

With the Director of Education and Social Services Mrs. Juliet Namuddu Nambi and the Manager of Business Development and Research Mr. Edison Masereka

Appreciations Are Always Welcomed

We love to share letters of appreciation coming from schools that have been lucky beneficiaries of the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS). This time the Kampala Capital City Authority public school Kabowa Church of Uganda extended their gratitude for the donation from the French Government and the benefits perceived so far in their new kitchen. This is again another fantastic example of a school moving away from traditional 3-stone fires, now achieving firewood savings of up to USD 300 per term.

Mrs. Sarah Baziwe, school Headmistress in the new kitchen.

Our Biggest School

Kitebi Secondary School is located in Kampala district. With over 3,000 children, it is the school with the highest population that has so far been included under the Project Activity.

The kitchen has made an amazing transformation moving away from using traditional 3 stone fires for their cooking needs. Today the school saves over USD 1,000 per year on firewood purchases. This is an amazing saving for a public school. Such achievement would have not been possible without the enthusiasm and collaboration from the Head teacher Hajji and the Deputy Maureen.

The Consequences of Lack of Maintenance

Simoshi takes pride in promoting the maintenance activities performed on all institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) installed under its Project Activity. Every participating school enjoys free annual maintenance on every IICS.

Unfortunately, the maintenance habit is lacking in schools that made huge investments in the past by purchasing IICS for their kitchens. We continuously experience the disappointment from school officials that complain how the IICS deteriorate over time and the schools expenditure go back to unsustainable amounts of firewood consumed per term, just as they did before with their traditional stoves.

Moreover, when schools attempt to repair the IICS, the cost for doing so becomes too high to afford. To make things even worse, the prospect of having to confront such expenses every now and then, leaves school officials wondering if it is really worth it investing in the technology, considering the costs to be incurred in the future.

Simoshi tackles the maintenance problem by ensuring the IICS are continuously monitored and maintained at least once a year, ensuring the damages are contained and the maintenance costs are kept low before damages become too serious reaching the pricey core parts of the IICS. The cost for implementing the maintenance programme is supported through the benefits accrued from the sale of carbon credits.

An example of a primary school in MItyana experiencing huge firewood expenditures with their IICS due to lack of maintenance.

In Smaller Versions for Homes

Over the past two years Simoshi has changed and sustained the cooking habits in 40 schools in Uganda, through its registered Project Activity with the Clean Development Mechanism and The Gold Standard “Institutional Improved Cook Stoves for Schools and Institutions in Uganda”. The use of social innovation and new technologies implemented in schools through the use of an institutional improved cook stove (IICS) over time provides an added value, especially when addressing the younger generation. Children spend a large part of their time in school.

We aim to develop a marketing channel through the existing school audience, addressing the benefits of clean, efficient, affordable, high-quality and durable cooking solutions to build the perception, motivation and behavior for the children to transfer that knowledge back to their households, hence changing social behavior towards more efficient cooking practices by adopting an improved cook stove (ICS), in the same way this has been achieved in schools kitchens.

We are currently running a pilot project introducing the new Ugastove Dual Fuel ICS in some of our participating schools, learning from teachers and best ways on approaching parents, to ensure ICS are available to all.

St. Paul Buloba Primary School, last week, picking a lot of interest from the female teachers, but our only gentleman looking away :)

Dry Firewood Equally Important

Consuming dry firewood in an institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) is acrucial aspect when aiming at achieving the highest fuel savings. Firewood does not always contain the same amount of energy and the main reason is the water stored in it. Fresh firewood has a 50% water content when chopped from the tree and it can take several months to dry. After 12 months under appropriate drying conditions, the water content lowers to 15% and the energy values double!

That is why our Project Officers take a lot of time teaching schools how to best store firewood, and what to look for when engaging with suppliers. We have developed the "Firewood Best Practice Manual" and we are happy to see how schools have slowly incorporated the concepts and made amazing changes with storage. Here we share some pictures from the progress made at Namungoona Kigobe Primary School.

Another Amazing Kitchen Transformation

St. Paul Buloba is a small catholic public primary school located outside Kampala, in a beautiful rural set-up. When we first visited the school early 2016, they were cooking - like the majority of schools in Uganda - with 3-stone fires in the outside, under a simple shelter. When rain was strong, there was no food cooked for the day.

As we moved in working with the school with the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS), Margaret, the Head Teacher, made huge financial efforts to get a nice kitchen infrastructure up to accommodate the new IICS. Today, they are proud to show us around their new kitchen infrastructure, with shelves that store dry wood and a clean and healthy environment. It is an inspiration to see how this school has managed an incredible change with such small resources.

Quality Assurance and Control a Top Priority

At Simoshi, we take it very seriously when it comes to ensuring the highest product standards are delivered to our customers. Together with Ugastove (our improved cook stove manufacturer supplier) we have put processes in place during the different manufacturing stages to check on the quality of materials used, and standarised processes involved.

Improved cook stoves are also tested periodically at accredited laboratories for fuel efficiency and safety, while materials used for insulation (such as mica and clay) are tested at the Uganda Industrial Research Institute for allumina contents and quality levels of insulation.

Inspection time during a Quality Assurance and Quality Control session at Ugastove

Training of Stove Manufacturers

Simoshi follows strict quality procedures with the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) it distributes. As such, it conducts periodic training to all of its suppliers of IICS, following the Quality Assurance and Quality Control Manual.

Today we were at Uganda Stove Manufacturing Limited (Ugastove) meeting with the team, each specialising in different activities (welding, assembling, cladding, insulation, operations) to make sure the standards for manufacturing, delivery and installation of the IICS are followed. Below we are sharing some pictures of this session.

We are now a registered Project Activity!

It is with great pleasure we would like to share the news that our Project Activity "Institutional Improved Cook Stoves for Schools and Institutions in Uganda" (10345) has been formally registered with the UNFCCC Clean Development Mechanism on the 7 February 2017.

Details of the project activity can be found here.

Such hard work and dedication was put into this project and would have never been possible with the help from many team members, technical experts, auditors and friends.

Follow us closely as we make progress with changing the traditional cooking practices of schools in Uganda!

Food Nutrition is an Urgent Matter

Every day is a learning experience at Simoshi, especially during our filed visits and time spent in schools talking to kitchen staff and Head Masters. To date, we have included 41 schools that have moved away from the traditional 3 stone fires to cooking with institutional improved stoves.

Loads of efforts have made such behavioral change possible, and team work with the school collaboration would have never been possible. Nevertheless, the transition is not over, and to sustain such change, continuous education and monitoring is implemented from Simoshi.

Some schools have been operating their institutional improved cook stoves for over one year. As we originally partnered with schools to change their traditional cooking habits, we realised that such approach focusing on the cooking appliance alone was limited and a look at the bigger picture was needed.

Looking at the bigger picture meant that taking such holistic approach included engaging the school in changing many habits and structures in the whole kitchen environment. The different dimensions and interventions include improving the quality of firewood delivered by suppliers, improving the kitchen hygiene and sanitation practices, improving the building structure, to introducing bio-fortified micro-nutrient dense staples and high iron content beans in school meals.

As we continue to include new schools under the programme, we realised that all provide the same maize (posho) and beans meals every day of the year. Furthermore, Head Masters claim that some of their pupils attend school hungry, the school meal being the only food they get during the day.

Food insecurity, hunger and malnutrition are complex problems. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, 214 million people are chronically hungry and child and infant malnutrition rates are among the highest in the world.

Last week we invited Harvest Plus (see picture below) to meet one of the participating schools to understand better what is currently being done in Uganda. We also had a meeting the following day with SNV Uganda, as we continue to explore further possible ways of improving food nutrition in our participating schools. We will keep you posted as we make progress in this worrying matter.

Covenant of Mayors visits Kyaggwe Primary School

Today we had visitors from the Covenant of Mayors in Sub-Saharan Africa project (funded by the Eropean Union), Expertise France, the Council of European Municipalities and Regions, Sustainable Energy Africa, Enda Energie and the French Environment & Energy Management Agency, as Kampala is one out of the seven award winning cities.

Since February 2015, Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) has been working on the development of its low carbon and climate resilient development strategy which resulted in the Kampala Climate Change Action Plan.

Launched in October 2016, The Kampala Climate Change Action Plan presents a 6 thematic-wide action plan, including access to efficient and renewable energy in schools. In order to support the implementation of the action plan, the EU selected of Kampala to be part of the Covenant of Mayors in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The 3-year project will allow KCCA to set a governance framework for its Climate Change Strategy in terms of quality management systems on critical data to follow up on the implementation and monitoring, engagement of multi-scale stakeholders, city cooperation within the country, but also showcase concrete pilot actions such as integrated neighborhood model plans and green services platforms.

Today we at Simoshi have been proud to showcase the uptake of the energy efficiency cooking technology by KCCA Kyaggwe Primary School, moving away from the traditional 3-stone fire cooking practices.

Women's Day

Today we are proud to celebrate the international Women's Day as we continue advocating towards gender equality.

Clean cooking is key to achieving global development and climate goals. Switching to an improved cook stove can deliver progress across 10 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Today Simoshi is proud to be making a contribution towards closing the "Gender Equality" (goal 5) gap. Unpaid work, including collecting wood and cooking, remain a major cause of gender inequality.

February's Update

Apologies for a silent past month but we have been busy as classes resumed early February. As part of our monitoring protocol, we visited all participating schools and conducted a training assessment in the kitchens where the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) are in operation.

This exercise is performed quarterly to ensure the "Kitchen Management Techniques" are followed and the best use of the IICS is achieved. At the same time, a reinforcement training session is conducted to refresh all lessons learned, collect feedback on the performance of the IICS, and perception of air quality by the kitchen staff.

Hosting Visitors

Last week we have been busy hosting two different groups of visitors. We had a group from UNDP, the NAMA facility, the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development (MEMD) and the Uganda Energy Credit Capitalisation Company performing a site visit to one of the schools included under our programme. Hajji, the Director for Gangu Muslim Primary School, was proud to speak about the performance of the stoves and we are grateful for his time and collaborative attitude. This meeting was requested by the NAMA facility as part of their site visit on the shortlisted NAMA for schools and institutional improved cook stoves in Uganda, submitted by MEMD and UNDP.

Our second second group of visitors belonged to the Ugandan Designated National Authority as part of the site visit performed for the issuance of the Letter of Approval (see previous blog post here below). This time we visited Mbuya Church Of Uganda Primary School, which is currently renovating the kitchen structure.

Great Start of the New Year

I wanted to share the good news as Simoshi has been granted the Letter of Approval from the Designated National Authority to implement its institutional improved cook stove carbon finance project activity in Uganda.

The Designated Operational Entity (UN auditor) finished successfully the auditing site visit before Christmas, and the Draft Validation Report was provided to us. We are expecting to submit the Final Validation Report and all Project Design Documents to the Clean Development Mechanism’s Executive Board in the next week. After this is done, we have to patiently await until end of March, and if all goes well, the Project Activity will be fully registered.

Stove Maintenance in Progress

Schools are now on holidays, and until early February 2017, children will be off enjoying their well deserved time off.

In the meantime, we profit from closed doors and quiet kitchens to maintain all institutional improved cook stoves (IICS), as part of the free annual maintenance Simoshi provides to all participating schools to bring all IICS to a "as new condition", while keeping fuel savings high as the first day of installation.

Normal wearing out of combustion chamber after one year of continuous use.

Combustion chamber is refurbished with a mixture of mica, sand and cement to cover the insulation bricks.

A Step Closer to Registration

The week has finished with Vikash's visit from Carbon Check India and Johann, our Consultant from Germany. The site visit from the Designated Operational Entity is the prior step for Simoshi's project activity to get the Final Validation Report ready for submission to the Clean Development Mechanism's Executive Board.

Two days of intensive work, site visits and discussions took place in Kampala, and we are delighted to share some pictures of these events.

Gold Standard Stakeholder Feedback Round

Simoshi Ltd. would like to invite you to participate in the Stakeholder Feedback Round (SFR) of the Gold Standard/CDM carbon project ‘Institutional Improved Cook Stoves for Schools and Institutions in Uganda. As part of the carbon certification requirements defined by the Gold Standard Foundation, stakeholders should be given the opportunity to provide their feedback on the project through two separate rounds of stakeholder consultations. The first round is the Local Stakeholder Consultation (LSC), a physical meeting which took place on 10/06/2015 at Triangle Hotel in Kampala, the second round the SFR.

Simoshi is a limited company registered in Uganda. Its energy efficient project linked to carbon finance is capable of bringing cleaner, healthier and environmentally friendly institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) to low-income individuals and the poor, especially women and children. Revenues from carbon credits will enable Simoshi to upscale the project and carry out new investments within the education and technology sectors. 

SImoshi is no longer applying for inclusion under the registered Improved Cook Stoves for East Africa (ICSEA) Limited Programme of Activities as still communicated during the LSC. Simoshi is now pursuing a Gold Standard/CDM stand-alone project registration.

Further, Simoshi would like to provide clarification to the stakeholders on the following since the same was not clearly and slightly differently presented during the LSC. The IICS project will include fixed or portable institutional stoves that use non-renewable firewood or renewable biomass (e.g. briquettes made out of agricultural residues or firewood from renewable plantations). These IICS are sold to schools/institutions who are allowed to pay back throughout the calendar year in three equal installments at zero interest rate. Alternatively, national and international donors support schools/institutions by covering partially or totally the cost of the IICS. All IICS receive free annual maintenance throughout the duration of the carbon finance project (up to 21 years).                                                                                                 

You are kindly invited throughout the following 2 months to provide comments and/or suggestions for improvement to the following proposed methods for the continuous input & grievance mechanism:

• Via email: virginia@simoshi.org and info@goldstandard.org
• Via telephone: +256 (0) 790 885 455 (Virginia Echavarria, managing director Simoshi Ltd.) and +41 22 788 70 80 (Gold Standard Foundation)
• Continuous input & grievance expression process book located at Simoshi Limited office: Lubowa Valley Estate, Plot 5355, Block 273, Lubugumu, Wakiso District, Kampala.

The continuous input & grievance mechanism’s purpose is to maintain a transparent communication channel with local stakeholders throughout the crediting period of the project, in addition to the Local Stakeholder Consultation and Stakeholder Feedback Round. 

A copy of the Project Design Document, Local Stakeholder Consultation Report and Gold Standard Passport can be accessed here to provide detailed information about the project. These documents will also be available at Simoshi’s office and Simoshi (www.simoshi.org) and GS website (www.goldstandard.org). The documents describe how your comments received during the Local Stakeholder Consultation have been taken into account, and allow you to provide any further comments, concerns or suggestions until 02/02/2017.

Please provide your feedback by Email sent to Virginia Echavarria (virginia@simoshi.org) or by phone +256 (0) 790 885 455.