Speakers raise awareness about needy charities
Kim Garraway
Thursday, December 01, 2005 - 07:00
The Barrie Examiner
Local News - In impoverished Guatemalan homes, it takes about four hours to cook corn so that it can be crushed into flour.
That means indoor cooking stoves must be running almost all the time in order to make enough of the tortillas that account for a large portion of a Guatemalan’s diet.
It also means many health and environmental effects for the second poorest country in the western hemisphere.
Tom Clarke started the Guatemalan Stove Project in 1999 in Perth, Ont., to fund and build masonry cookstoves to aid the impoverished families.
Clarke spoke in Barrie last night at an event sponsored by the Barrie Telecommuting Project, which is a partnership between Living Green and Suiteworks, funded by Transport Canada’s Moving on Sustainable Transportation program. The event’s focus was international development and aimed to raise awareness in the Barrie area about sustainability and charities that need support.
To date, the Guatemalan Stove Project has built more than 3,000 stoves.
“The main thing we’re looking at is health effects,” said Clarke. “It adds 10 to 15 years to each family member’s life by not being exposed to indoor air pollution.”
The stoves reduce firewood fuel by half, said Clarke, and fuel consumption is a large portion of a family’s expenses.
Randy van Straaten, an engineer who has worked with the United Nations Development Program, also spoke last night.
Van Straaten researched energy-efficient housing initiatives in Mongolia.
He said a typical Mongolian ger — which is a modest 37-square-metre home constructed of a wood frame, insulated with felt and covered in cloth — uses about five tonnes of coal a year and emits about seven tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Van Straaten said in Canada it would cost about $1,000 for someone to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by one tonne, and for the same in Mongolia, it would cost $50.
He doesn’t want Canadians to lose faith in these development projects as he suggested is happening.
Authorized by the Official Agent for Erich Jacoby-Hawkins
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You will find information about the project at www.guatemalastoveproject.org.
If you would like to contribute or volunteer to help out, you can contact Tom Clarke at (613) 267-5202.
E-mail inquiries should go to info@guatemalastoveproject.org.