Accomplishments

Below you will find a brief description of each of our accomplishments which all relate to our search for cooking options that best meet our criteria.

1) Tested a Safe Paraffin Stove in the Community

One paraffin stove we discovered through our research was the Arivi Stove.  This stove is both safe and efficient.  After speaking with a representative from Arivi, we were able to test a prototype for the rest of our time here.  We decided, after running a few brief tests, that community feedback would be the most valuable information for us.  We gave the stove to families for a night and asked them to fill out surveys about their experiences with the stove.  This was vital for us to gauge the community’s opinion of the stove.
For more information on the interviews and surveys we conducted, as well as the community trials, click HERE.

2) Compared Safe Paraffin Stoves to Existing Stoves in the Park

We tested another safe Paraffin stove, called the ParaSafe Primus Stove.  This stove is similar to the flame stove from Arivi in its safety features; however, the design of the stove differs since it is a pressurized (primus) stove.  Since there were two viable stove options, we needed to test and compare both of them with the flame and primus stoves currently being used in the community.  This data would ultimately help us raise interest in the safe stoves when we demonstrated the stoves to community members.
For an analysis of the various paraffin stoves, click HERE.

3) Made and Tested a Hot Box

One option that we tried other than a stove was a Hot Box.  A Hot Box is an insulated container used to continue cooking food after it has been initially heated by another means.  A Hot Box is used to reduce the time spent cooking on a stove, which will reduce fuel expenditure among other things.  To make the Hot Box, we collected a cardboard box, some newspaper, and a towel to make our own hot box to test before suggesting it to the community.  We discovered that the hot box was able to cook the food as well as keep it warm for several hours afterward.  We determined that using a hot box would therefore help residents use less paraffin and decrease the amount of time that an unsafe stove is being used.
For more about the Hot Box, click HERE.

4)Presented the Safe Options to the Community

We presented the safe stoves to the community to raise interest and see if people would be interested in buying these stoves.  We found that they were interest in both stoves and would be willing to purchase them if they were available.  This was crucial information, as it would be useless to try to sell stoves to a community where they were not liked.
For more information, click HERE.

5) Began Plans for Implementation of Safe Paraffin Stoves

We began to plan how the safe paraffin stoves can be implemented in Monwabisi Park.
For more information, click HERE.