Carla & Ian are running for the Sunseed Tanzania Trust

STT has been working in rural Tanzania for over 10 years, helping households access cleaner cooking practices that are locally appropriate, and helping to battle deforestation, which means spending a lot of time getting to know the people we work with.

Why focus on these issues?

Women (mainly) cook on 3-stone fires inside their poorly ventilated homes, which is like cooking on a campfire - imagine the smoke! They do this for two or three meals each day, every day, their whole lives. This leads to all sorts of terrible respiratory illnesses and eye disease for the women, their children and anyone else who can stand to be in such a smoky environment. Not only that, these fires burn a lot of wood in an inefficient way, which means women and girls have to walk for hours each week collecting firewood, often carrying loads of 20k of wood. This is backbreaking work, and takes up a lot of time that could be used doing other things. It also puts women and girls at risk of attack (animals and people).

So what does STT do?

We train groups of stove builders in each community to build improved stoves made out of locally available materials (mud and bricks), which have a chimney to take the smoke outside, and also burn wood more efficiently. The stove builders then tell their community about the stoves, and sell them to their neighbours at an affordable price.

STT has also developed a large improved stove for use in schools and hospitals, which are a real success, particularly in reducing the fuel bills for overstretched institutions like this.

STT also runs training in schools about the harmful effects of smoke, and provides demonstrations about the stoves. We also provide training in caring for trees in order to combat deforestation. We help to establish tree nurseries, and train school children and community members in a nifty trick to make saplings more drought resistant using a naturally occurring fungus called Mycorrhiza.

Why don't you help support the great work we're doing!