PRF promise results for women and climate in PRF target rural areas
Date: April-August 2018
Location: At Nakham village and Piengyam village, Xiengkhor District, Houaphan Province
Targeted: 80 households
PDF File: Field Report on the Super Clean Cook Stove training (Mimi Moto) for the community acceptance study
What is the issue?
Traditional cook stoves using wood or charcoal do not burn fuel efficiently and as a result, emit toxic particles and pollutants that are highly damaging to health. Typical emissions from traditional cook stoves are comparable to second hand smoke from 400 cigarettes per hour.
What are the consequences?
Indoor air pollution is a major issue in Lao PDR ranking number one in causing lost healthy life years. Every year, smoke kills more people than Malaria, HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis all together.
Main smoke impact:
- Respiratory diseases
- Pneumonia
- Headhache
- Lung cancer
- Heart disease
- Stroke
- Baby lung altered
- Baby brain altered
- Baby weight lower
What can be done?
The advance biomass cook stoves (Mimi Moto) have shown a great potential in achieving a very high thermal efficiency and very low emission of carbon monoxide (CO) and particulate matters (PM 2.5) that is found in the smoke.
What are the potential benefits of using Mimi Moto Cook stove?
- Near total elimination of harmful HAP emissions for mothers and family members;
- Use pellets – no need to change fuel type;
- Grilling is easy and food test is the same;
- Faster cooking time which means more time for other chores, more time with family, or more discretionary leisure time;
- Modern and attractive design – highly aspirational product;
- Longer life – no need to buy a new stove every year (life duration of around 5 years);
- Safe and sturdy.
So why do we need to test the Mimi Moto cook stove in our village?
There are several other factors such as local cooking practices, household specific factors, fuel availability and use that affect the cookstove adoption. Hence, these cookstoves need to be assessed for their acceptance and adoption by households.
In the above context, the Poverty Reduction Fund is supporting this consumer acceptance study of Mimi Moto cookstoves. This project will help in understanding the following:
- Mimi Moto cookstoves and its capability to cook common Lao cuisines;
- Ease of use of Mimi Moto cookstoves in Lao households;
- Training needs of users for proper use of the Mimi Moto cookstoves;
- Other geographic and contextual factors that may affect the performance and acceptance of Mimi Moto cookstoves.
How the testing is organized?
All the 20 households that have been selected and already interviewed will receive a Mimi Moto cook stove today with the pellet to be used as a fuel.
During the two months the Super Clean is handed over to you, you have the responsibility to:
- Use the cook stove on daily basis and for every meal
- Follow the instruction on the cook stove use based on the training that you have received
- Keep the cook stove in a safe place at home
- Use only pellets as a fuel (no wood or charcoal)
- Call the PRF team if you have any issue with the cook stove and ask for technical assistance
- Allocate some time (around 2 hours) to answer the questions from the survey team (end line survey).
The survey team that you have already met will come for the interview during the week of April 8, 2018. A letter will be sent to you to give you the exact day and time for the interview.
The Poverty Reduction Fund as the responsibility to:
- Organize a demonstration so that you will understand the instruction to use the cook stove on a daily basis;
- Give you pellets to be used as a fuel for the Super Clean cook stove (daily use: 1 to 2 kilograms)
- Provide you with technical assistance in case of problem with the cook stove to ensure no interruption in the daily use of the Super Clean cook stove;
- Conduct a monitoring session every 3 days during the first 10 days to follow up on the use of the Super Clean cook stove and assist you if you face any issues;
- Assist your community to organize meetings after the Super Clean cook stove testing in order to agree on the mechanism for the use of the Super Clean cook stove after the testing.
- Replace your Super clean cook stove with a new Super clean cook stove if your Super clean cook stove (without financial contribution)
What will happen after the Mimi Moto cook stove testing?
If the households follow the agreement and participate to the testing until the end, the Mimi Moto cook stove will be given to your community and the PRF will assist you to find the best mechanism so that all households interested to use the Mimi Moto can continue to use it.
For the pellets, we have enough pellet at the moment to stand for 6 months. During this time, we will look for a local entrepreneur to start the pellet production locally so that you can continue to find pellet for your cook stove in the future.