Joel Agbey is a secondary student at Tema International School in Tema, Ghana. In early February of this year, Joel teamed up with his fellow students on a project to fulfill the Creativity, Activity, Service (CAS) component of their International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme by delivering Envirofit stoves to the 40 families living in the small town of Akorlikokpe, Ghana. Joel wrote to us to tell us about their experience, and we’re happy to share his letter here.
Dear Envirofit,
My name is Joel Agbey and I am writing to you to tell you about my project and how I purchased 40 units of your firewood clean cookstoves. I attend Tema International School in Ghana where I take the International Baccalaureate course.
The Eco-Stove Project is a non-for-profit CAS (Creativity, Activity, Service) initiative headed by me and aimed at providing a more suitable cooking procedure than is currently being used by the people of Akorlikokpe, Ghana.
Akorlikokpe is a small village that is a little beyond Sogakopke in the Volta Region. As part of our International Baccalaureate orientation, we made our way there for the first time and I realized the community lacked a lot, but one of the things that touched me the most was their cooking environment. For stoves, they just had a hole with a few stones around it that produced a lot of carbon monoxide. This isn’t good to their health or the environment.
A traditional three-stone fire in Akorlikokpe, Ghana
This motivated me to start this project because I didn’t see why women should cook and not enjoy it, and be threatened by health risks.
When I got back from Akorlikokpe I told my mom about the project and she told me about Envirofit and how you aim to produce stoves that are ecofriendly, so I decided to raise some money to buy 40 units of stoves since that is the amount of families in the community. I put together a small group at school and came up with the name Eco-Stove, meaning ecologically and economically friendly stoves. My group members and I worked hard to bring together some funds to purchase these stoves. To raise the funds, we sold ice cream at school, made hot dogs and sold them, and we wrote letters and sent them to fundraisers.
The group chose the name Eco-Stove, meaning ecologically and economically friendly stoves
I was able to raise 5,000 Ghana cedis to purchase 40 units of stoves at the beginning of this year. On our next visit to the village we took the stoves along and showed the locals how to use them. We educated them about the harm their traditional cookstoves cause, and showed them the economic and health benefits of using these clean cookstoves. One of the main problems we encountered was the only source of fuel they had was firewood, so we could only get the firewood stoves. The women were very happy with the clean cookstoves and I am really glad I was able to bring smiles to their faces.
The modern cookstoves were given to the families in Akorlikokpe
This project was a success and I wish to create a club in my school before I leave to continue this project. Thank you very much for your time for going through my letter, I think Envirofit is doing a great job.
Kindly watch this video about the Eco-Stove project.
Yours Faithful,
Joel Agbey
Have a great cookstoves story? We’d love to hear from you – just email us at info@envirofit.org