On Giving Tuesday, give the gift of solar cooking to those in need!

Giving Tuesday

Dear friends,
Please join us this Giving Tuesday in empowering people like Esther, featured below, to escape poverty, disease, and environmental degradation thanks to solar cooking. Nearly half the world population relies on three-stone fires or primitive stoves, burning dirty fuels, to meet their basic cooking and water sterilization needs. Your generous contributions through Network for Good or AmazonSmile helps free them of this dangerous and debilitating burden.

Esther, a senior woman living in Tlacolula, Oaxaca, used to cook mostly on her traditional “brasero” three-stone fire. The cooking smoke irritated her eyes and lungs. She also owns a gas stove which she uses sparingly. In her community, an average 8.2% of income is spent on fuel.

Click link to view on Youtube. Esther, a customer of Lorena Harp’s solar cooker social enterprise in Oaxaca, launched with SHE’s support, describes how beans and other dishes taste better when cooked in the Haines solar cooker, how it saves her gas, fuelwood, and time, and how she would like to have at least four solar cookers to cook different dishes simultaneously.

Earlier this year, Esther was pruning a tree for firewood, when one of the tree limbs fell on a neighbor’s roof, destroying it. Replacing it cost her 5000 pesos (about $250). This was a motivating factor in buying a Haines solar cooker from her local community solar cooking “ambassador.” She quickly recouped this cost (500 pesos, about $25 USD) in gas savings. Thanks to the social enterprise’s support, and Esther’s past work experience as a cook, she is now a solar chef, leaving her solar cooker at home unsupervised to cook a wide diversity of dishes while she sells her goods at local markets. Esther is currently training to be an “ambassador” herself, as she loves sharing her passion for this “super,” “extraordinary” technology, and to earn 200 pesos (about $10 USD) for every solar cooker she sells.

Your support will help us empower more people like Esther to change their lives for the better thanks to solar cooking. Please make a contribution today.

Thank you!

Sophie Lyman, Executive Director, and the SHE Team