World Environment Day Celebrations

A big thank you as we have got another donation, this time coming from Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) who donated 3 institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) to Kawempe Muslim Primary School.

To celebrate the World Environment Day, our colleagues from GIZ in Uganda visited the primary school to officially hand over the donation to the school Head Teacher Mr. Zaid and the Deputy Ms. Hadijja.

Our Founder Ms. Virginia was also present to share her words of gratitude, and announce the school will join the Project Activity registered with the Gold Standard for its carbon financing certification, allowing the school to enjoy free IICS annual maintenance for the next decade.

The school is now moving away from using traditional 3-stone fires to energy efficient cook stoves, and will achieve firewood savings of 1,000,000 Ugandan Shillings per school term, allowing them to use that money to buy more food that is desperately needed to increase the portion sizes.

Watch the video here below to hear Ms. Hadijja’s story on the children’s learning journey and the meals they provide at the school.

From The Classroom

A big and warm thank you to our supporter Herzlack who has donated 2 institutional improved cook stoves to Katwe Martyrs, a government aided primary school of 450 day scholars.

This video was filmed last Saturday as children from P7 class were busy revising. Herzlack is a company based in Germany that manufactures vegan nail polish, and we were chatting with the kids about the donor’s background. For the past two years, Herzlack has been an amazing sponsor of several schools, helping them move away from traditional 3-stone fires for all their cooking needs.

Term II Kicks Off

Last Monday children went back to school to get the second school term started. Which means we are back with our Project Officers training and supporting the cooks to make sure good care is taken of the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS), while a clean kitchen environment is achieved.

The month of may was a busy one with maintenance activities, and 48 schools had their IICS and chimney pipes repaired: corroded top rings welded, chimney pipes and hats replaced, combustion chambers plastered.

These activities are provided for free as schools participate for a 10-year period under Simoshi’s carbon registered Project Activity GS4364. It is through the income generated from the sale of the carbon credits that schools not only move away from using traditional 3-stone fires for cooking, but can also enjoy of 50% firewood savings for a whole decade.

New Schools Join

Schools have been on holidays during the month of May, as they await to kick-start Term II on Monday 27 May. This is the best time to get new institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) delivered and installed as kitchens are not operating.

Six new schools have joined our Project Activity “Institutional Improved Cook Stoves for Schools and Institutions in Uganda” registered with the Gold Standard during this month.

We share pictures from the installation done at Mbogo High School in Kawempe. This is a boarding private secondary school of 1,000 girls attending. They have 2 kitchens on site, and 10 IICS of different saucepan capacities were installed.

We now enter into a collaborative effort as Simoshi will be supporting the school for the next 10 years, ensuring the new IICS continue saving at least 50% of firewood, by repairing the stoves for free through the whole period, for as many times as needed. This is paired with continuous training of their kitchen staff, to achieve the highest clean kitchen environment standards.

Winds Of Change For The Cooking Sector

Last Tuesday our Founder and Managing Director Virginia Echavarria attended the “Clean Coking Summit in Africa”, organised by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris. It was a fantastic day to find so many committed individuals pushing to making a positive change towards the cooking situation of the African continent. Here below we share some images from the event, Virginia with Honorable Ruth Nankabirwa Ssentamu (Uganda’s Minister of Energy and Mineral Development), and Dr. Faith Birol (Director General of the IEA).

During the Summit, USD 2.2 billion worth of financing and investments were publicly announced from government and private sector sources. “Nine African governments have publicly committed to making access to clean cooking a national priority and are taking necessary steps to implement proven policy measures in their countries to usher greater progress. More than 130 delegations endorsed “The Clean Cooking Declaration”, including 28 governments, as well as many international organisations, and civil society, and us, Simoshi.

“The declaration is a clear demonstration of our shared commitment and resolve to collective action, and progressing this important agenda through various fora until this issue is finally solved”.

SNV Support Continues

The Dutch NGO SNV is supporting schools in Wakiso and Kampala districts with 40% and 30% of the stove costs respectively since November last year. Such support will continue until August 2024, so we are pushing to get as many schools as possible to enjoy from such benefit.

Nevertheless, it is still difficult for schools to face the remaining 60% and 70% stove costs. An average school with 800 students will need 3 institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) to cater for all the daily meals for children and staff. That balance translates to USD 650.00. With all the urgent and pressing needs the schools face, that amount of money can become impossible.

At Simoshi we are always trying to support the schools with the provision of loans free of interest, and free of collateral, allowing schools to pay back in installments throughout the school year. This financial support is possible thanks to the revenues accrued from the sale of the carbon credits, as we are always allocating a lump sum as a revolving fund to make sure at least 15 new schools are supported every year.

Clean Firewood Combustion

When firewood is burned in good conditions for a fire, it produces very little smoke or unhealthy particulate matter. Burning dry firewood makes all the difference: it burns hotter and cleaner and is also 30 percent more efficient than logs with a high moisture content. Firewood that has been split, dried, and stored under cover for at least a year burns best and produces fewer harmful chemicals that remain in your system for years.

That is why continuously training the cooks at schools on how to best store the firewood is an important part of our programme. The training is also monitored, at least 6 times every year, to ensure the school follows the “Best Firewood Practice Manual”, because cleaner firewood burning not only means higher savings, but also a healthier environment for all.

Maintenance Ready

The end of school Term 1 is around the corner. Schools will break off on Friday 5 of May, and children will be back from their holidays on Monday 27 May, to commence with Term 2.

The holiday period is the opportunity for us to get our hands on all those institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) that need repairs. Schools receive free IICS maintenance anytime of the year, whenever needed, for a period of 10 years.

Lately, we have been experiencing corrosion on the connectors than allow the smoke to get pushed from the combustion chamber towards the chimney pipe and outside the kitchen building.

Today we collected 30 connectors that will be installed in several schools very soon, to ensure cooks continue to enjoy a smokeless kitchen environment!

New Issuance 12,540 VERs

Great news to share, as we have new carbon credits in stock. These emission reductions belong to the year 2023, where 105 schools successfully moved away from using 3-stone fires, and subsequently, reduced 12,540 tons of carbon dioxide during 365 full days. The carbon credits are the result of a lot of hard work, team effort, because without the continuous collaboration of school staff and cooks, such carbon credits would have never been issued by The Gold Standard.

Achievements are so many, and we have summarised them in the picture here below, that represent the positive impacts reflected on 9 Sustainable Development Goals.

Cooking: A Decent Job?

My favourite side of this story, the one we write together with our colleagues at Simoshi and its partners every day, is the incredible impact we make in the quality of the working environment for those involved when preparing the children’s daily meals.

The workplace should be a place where people feel happy, engaged, safe, inspired. Happiness at work reduces stress, raises your energy by 65% and boosts productivity as much as 31%. The kitchen space and the work of the cooks should be a comfortable environment, because they already experience the difficulties of hot food exposure, equipment and hot metal surfaces, withstanding the pressure of standing many hours at a time, and lifting heavy saucepans.

If the difficulties above are enhanced by the use of traditional 3-stone fireplaces, the workplace becomes intolerable. The fire flames becoming a constant threat and the smoke precluding the normal breathing are just a few of what the pictures show here below.

The positive impact in the lives of a cook the introduction of institutional improved cook stoves have in a school kitchen is something we are not only proud of here at Simoshi, but it is also a reminder that is it worth all the efforts to keep on trying, to get as many schools as we can, away from traditional cooking practices.

What We Achieved In 2023

As we prepare for great announcements because SustainCert (the validation and verification body for Gold Standard) just finalised our fifth Performance review, and the issuance of 12,540 new carbon credits is imminent, we review what we have achieved during the year 2023.

With 105 schools included under the Project Activity “Institutional Improved Cook Stoves in Uganda” and 376 institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) installed, continuously monitored and repaired of different saucepan capacities (from 30 litres to 600 litres), 15,186 tons of firewood were saved throughout the whole year, as schools successfully moved away from traditional cooking practices.

For visual purposes only (but the information we love to compare our data to) is foresters’s rule of thumb when measuring standing trees: if you can hug a tree and your fingers just overlap it, it will be about 40 cm. “diameter breast height”, roughly one ton of wet firewood. Therefore, let’s imagine 15,186 of those trees still standing today, because schools avoided cutting them down during 2023, with their energy efficient cooking technology! That is a gorgeous achievement.

There are approximately 22,000 schools in Uganda still using traditional 3-stone fires to prepare the children’s daily meals. By simply changing their cooking practices and using IICS, it would mean 3,181,828 trees could be saved every year…..That is a gorgeous dream.

Teaching Children Through Kitchen Improvements

We filmed this short video during our first visit when installing the institutional improved cook stoves in a primary school in Kawanda. When children were asked whether we should keep the trees standing or not, they all replied we should chop them off.....

Teachers slowly introduced the benefit of keeping our trees standing, and the changes in the school kitchen helped to better understand how the firewood consumption and subsequent reduction on smoke directly benefited everyone at school.

This is a great opportunity for children to share their new experiences back home, as parents usually cook with traditional stoves too. The transfer of knowledge is a great tool that will also have a positive impact in the cooking practices at the household level.

On Our Way For Repairs

Maintenance of institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) never stops. Early this morning, our colleague Robert had prepared all the material necessary to do the free repairs at 3 schools: Queen of Peace primary School, Uganda Martyrs Primary School, and Kasubi Church of Uganda Primary School.

Our commitment to supporting schools throughout a 10-year period includes free IICS maintenance. Every year we ensure the efficiency of the stoves are kept to their maximum standards. Whatever is needed, whenever is needed, we are always there with the necessary parts to replace, or repair, and have the stove performing and looking like new. For example, throughout 2023, we spent 65,725,000 Ugandan Shillings repairing IICS on 105 participating schools. This is the equivalent to USD 17,000.

Today we had focused on replacing corroded chimney pipes and connectors. It is not necessary to wait for the holiday period to perform this kind of maintenance event, the school can continue using the IICS while repairs are being made.

Never Stop Checking

Before.

This is the typical example that supports a continuous monitoring approach to the school kitchen environment. What it is sometimes explained as a census approach, it means we are checking the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) every other month - meaning at least 6 time per year - for the 10-year period Simoshi agrees to support the schools in their cooking transformation.

Malaika Kindergarten and Primary School joined our project activity in March 2022. During our routine monitoring visits last month we found the cook had started to light a traditional 3-stone fire in the kitchen. Immediately we communicated with the school head teacher to discuss the purchase of a new IICS, and today Sunday the kitchen is fully cooking again with energy efficient appliances only. This is the result of a dedicated team of project officers that are seriously checking the usage of the IICS of over 110 participating schools, as part of our commitment to ensure emission reductions are REAL.

After.

Women’s Day

Women and girls are disproportionately impacted by climate change as well as indoor air pollution. - at higher risk of health impacts, food insecurity and loss of livelihoods. They are instrumental when delivering change, and we will keep supporting them through the transition to more clean and efficient cooking practices.

Everyday we celebrate our little girls that one day will be the decision makers at their homes. Hoping that knowledge transfer from what is seen at the school kitchen is well adopted when making choices for their personal cooking activities.

Not All Stoves Are The Same

It breaks our hearts to find in some school kitchens, when once upon a time, a new stove was constructed but today looks completely destroyed. There is no difference when it comes to firewood consumption or air quality when comparing it to a traditional 3-stone fireplace.

The lack of continuous maintenance leaves the stove’s combustion chambers broken, and as you can see from the pictures here below, they are just “holes” with tiles surrounding it.

Chimneys are usually blocked with soot, corroded or dismantled, so all the smoke from the firewood combustion finds no way outside the building, leaving cooks badly exposed to indoor air pollution.

Carbon finance has allowed us to use part of the revenues accrued from the sale of the carbon credits to repair all institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) for free, for a period of 10 years, to all participating schools.

For example, during 2023, a total of 65,725,000 Ugandan Shillings was spent repairing the IICS from 105 schools.

From Herzlack With Love

Yesterday we had the pleasure of delivering some gifts sent by our generous donor from Germany, Herzlack, who has not only been supporting several schools with their transition to energy efficient cooking practices throughout 2023. Herzlack is a beauty company that manufactures vegan nail polish, and they wanted to gift their beautiful nail products to the teachers in those same schools they are supporting. The little children from grade 1 were also lucky winners, and got some yummy gummy bears to share during the break.

Yesterday I felt very lucky to receive all the smiles and gratitude from everyone at Bunamwaya Church of Uganda Primary School, so I wanted to share the pictures of the day, as we checked on the kitchen to ensure daily cooking is efficiently happening, with a kitchen free of smoke and reduction in firewood consumption achieved at its highest!

Tough Delivery

Our participating schools grow and the population increases, meaning they also need to enlarge their kitchens. More institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) are needed and this is the case of St. Angella Primary School in Kisaasi, who ordered a new IICS of 170 litres capacity, to add to their existing pool of 4 IICS that have been in operation since 2019.

Delivery can sometimes become challenging, because access to the kitchen can be far from the entrance, the truck cannot access the building where the IICS should be installed. This time around, not only was the kitchen far, but the passage was very narrow, obliging us to destroy some of the walls to make it wide enough for the IICS to pass through. Below are some images of the struggle but successful Sunday, with the cooks happily giving a helping hand to make this happen.

Back to School!

How exciting it is to be in the classrooms on the first day of school! Everyone is so happy to see their friends and teachers again, after two full months of holidays. We paid a visit to five schools along Busabala road this morning together, with Aziz Wakibi, as we conducted the monitoring field visits for the project activity’s fifth verification exercise.

New School Year

It is “back to school” time! Children are excited to go back to see their friends, and schools are now busy getting the compound and classrooms ready to welcome them.

Government aided schools will kick-off classes on Monday 5th of February. Just over one more week to go.

We have taken these long holiday period (2 months) to repair all institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) and inspect the kitchen infrastructure of all 105 schools included and supported under our Project Activity. Sometimes, our Project Officers’ trained eye can spot problems that escapes school staff. Not only at the IICS level, but also at the kitchen building. For example, roofing problems with metal sheets leakages which during the rainy season can damage the IICS combustion chamber or saucepans with holes that need replacing, just to name a few.

There is also time for enjoying some board games - here I caught children playing Ludo, while carpenters are busy building new desks and benches.