Promoting solar cooking

From Solar Cooking

[edit] Introduction

Solar cooking promotion groups need to share more information, collaborate more and pool their voices to be heard by opinion-makers and decision-makers who could provide more resources to support the spread of solar cooking. Fostering these objectives is part of Solar Cookers International's agenda. Whether they are governmental, international or private, major (and minor) organizations involved in any area of international development, poverty reduction, improving the status of the world's women, and protection of environmental resources must be informed of how their own goals can be met by including solar cooking in their programs--and after being informed, these groups should take practical action. Governments that currently inhibit the spread of solar cooking by heavily taxing imports of solar-related supplies while also subsidizing fossil fuel imports need to re-evaluate their thinking. Forward thinking businesses have a role to play by investing in the not-quite-yet-emerging solar cooker market, creating more manufacturing, distribution and sales facilities, and participating in spreading awareness. Schools can become involved in teaching solar cooking--both as a tool for teaching science concepts and as a practical matter of survival and home economics.

To a degree, these things are happening. Malawi has a renewable energy component in its school curriculum. Senegal has appointed a person to spearhead solar cooking work in the country. At least one government agency in The Gambia is charged with teaching solar cooking. There are other examples of small, seriously underfunded steps being made. Much more will have to be done. Many believe that there will be a tipping point where a critical mass of awareness in the right circles will greatly speed up the spread of solar cooking.

It is also important to understand that often solar cooking is best introduced as part of an Integrated Cooking Method where solar cooking is combined with heat-retention cooking and simple fuel-efficient wood stoves. Slightly sprouting whole grains and pulses/legumes[1], in addition to enhancing digestibility and nutritional values, will shorten cooking times, resulting in more efficient use of sun and fuel.

Dr. Dieter Seifert has pointed out that in most parts of the world, to cook a pot of beans, people put the dry beans and the cooking water into a pot and cook it over a wood fire for four hours. If people learn that they can soak the beans overnight first, they can save two hours worth of fuelwood. They save an additional one and a half hours of fuelwood if they learn to heat the soaked beans over a fire until the beans have boiled for 10-15 minutes. They can then put the pot into an insulated basket where it will continue to cook for 3-4 hours without using any fuel. The heat-retention cooker can be as simple as a basket filled with dry grass or hay. We should all consider the value of such simple changes before one launching into anything more complicated.

On the personal and local level, if you enjoy and benefit from using the sun to cook, talk to people about it. Talk to friends, family, teachers, students, store clerks, people you might sit next to on a bus or stand next to in a line at a store. If you carry copies of a small Universal Leaflet, you will have something to give to anyone who shows an interest, to direct them to further information.

[edit] Start small

Longtime SCI information exchange specialist Ramon Coyle advises that it is best to focus on small goals and accomplish them with great intensity. It is better to drive one nail all the way into the wood than to only scratch the surface with ten nails. It is better to plant one tree and nurture it to full growth than to plant a hundred trees that wither away quickly in the dry season. Applied to solar cooker promotion, these comparisons suggest a few other ideas:

It is better to take the time to teach one woman to become an expert solar cooker user who makes great solar cooked food, than to demonstrate solar cooking to 10 government officials who will nod their heads in agreement but never do anything with the idea.
It is better to show one skilled handyman or handywoman or carpenter how to make usable solar cookers, than to demonstrate the concept to 300 people who won't be able to make use of the concept because they have no solar cookers and no one to teach them how to use one.
It is better to make sure that one new solar cook learns all that is needed to make good use of a solar cooker and to gain practice and confidence in using it, than to give brief lessons to ten solar cooks who might later give up on solar cooking at the first obstacle or setback.