SHE and BISS collaborate to present solar cooking success to the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves

Solar Household Energy (SHE) and Bolivia Inti-Sud Soleil (BISS), a French solar cooking NGO, are working together to promote greater collaboration between the solar cooking community and the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. Solar Cookers International (SCI) has supported this project by reaching out to the SCI Network to gather ideas and feedback, such that SHE and BISS could speak as one voice on behalf of the solar cooking community.

On Monday, June 23rd, this project culminated in a presentation on solar cooking followed by a discussion session at the Global Alliance headquarters in Washington, DC. Global Alliance representatives included key staff from the technical, knowledge management, fuels, partnerships, and other departments, as well as Regional Market Managers. Representatives of SHE, BISS and One Earth Designs (the company behind SolSource solar cooker) first gave a brief overview of the vast diversity of solar cooker technologies and significant projects, after which One Earth Designs served as a case study. The PowerPoint presentation can be found here.

The project’s objectives and proposed solutions towards greater collaboration were then discussed, centered around three main ideas.
1. Greater representation of the solar cooking community within the Global Alliance can be achieved by engaging solar cooker organizations to contribute to GACC knowledge-sharing platforms.
2. The Global Alliance offers many tools, such as the Clean Cookstoves catalog, and connections to experienced partners (with expertise in microfinance, monitoring and evaluation, etc…), which can be more widely utilized by solar cooker organizations to support effective solar cooker project management and commercialization.
3. The Global Alliance members acknowledged the need to refine standards and protocols in testing and other areas to meet the needs of both solar cooking organizations and larger international institutions.

The Global Alliance welcomed these efforts to work towards greater collaboration, and invited SHE and BISS to participate in monthly meetings as a first step towards achieving these common goals.