This year, we commemorate the 10th anniversary of the International Day of the Girl under the theme “Our time is now—our rights, our future”. The day focuses attention on the need to address challenges girls face and to promote girls’ empowerment and the fulfilment of their human rights. The day is also a chance to recognise all the progress that’s been made in the last decade, but also an opportunity to highlight how much further there is still to go.
DelAgua’s Tubeho Neza project has been positively impacting the lives of girls for the last 10 years by providing high quality, high performance cookstoves free of charge, to the rural population. By the end of this month we will have distributed 1 million stoves across rural Rwanda, making #TubehoNeza the largest cookstove project in the world.
95% of household cooking in rural Rwanda is done by women and girls. The daily drudgery of wood collection, tending the fire, food preparation, cooking and cleaning up occupies as much as 8 hours every day, leaving little time for anything else. And because forestry is so depleted due to the reliance on traditional open fires, girls have to travel long distances from the safety of their villages to try and find wood ,leaving them vulnerable to attack and sexual assault.
The DelAgua stove uses 71% less wood than a traditional 3 stone fire so time taken to collect fuel is significantly reduced and it requires just small twigs which can be gathered locally, keeping girls safer and close to home. The stove lights easily, boils water rapidly and cooks staples such as beans in half the time. This means girls have more time to attend school or play with their friends.
Click on the names below to hear from some of our female beneficiaries and see how the DelAgua cookstove has impacted their lives.
Nadine – Nadine is 15 and there are eight in her family including baby Brian.
Philomene – In Philomene’s family of nine it is the children who collect the wood and tend the fire.
