Describe the project objectives:
This is a large scale multi-year project with the ultimate goal of building 3,000 "Justa" cook stoves in rural Guatemala by the end of 2022. Greeley Centennial Rotary and Sequim Sunrise Rotary clubs are partnering to help build 60 of those 3,000 beginning in early 2022.
Describe the benefit to the community and/or improve lives:
This project will actually support three "areas of focus" of Rotary International; Maternal and Child Health, Economic and Community Development and Environmental. The "Justa" stove burns less wood so is a benefit to the environment reducing greenhouse gases by more than a billion tons, burning less wood will allow for forests to be revitalized before permanent damage occurs because of deforestation.
The stove utilizes venting so as to prevent smoke related illnesses and because there is no open flame will provide for safe cooking preventing women and children from open flame injuries. Because the individual families are involved and StoveTeam's partnering with local entrepreneurs in Latin America to establish sustainable factories to produce fuel efficient stoves this provides both jobs and safety which helps economic development.
Sustainability:
Because StoveTeam's objective is to train local entrepreneurs in building and maintaining the stoves the materials needed to build the stoves are sourced locally and the cost is minimal it is sustainable.
Active Rotarian Involvement:
Each recipient family is involved in the construction of their Justa stove. Normally four volunteer trips happen each year and StoveTeam Intl encourages club participation in building the stoves however, because COVID is currently getting more severe in Guatemala as the country struggles with lack of testing and vaccines and given that volunteers could spread the Delta variant to communities in Guatemala who do not have access to the vaccine or to medical care, they are waiting until Spring 2022 to consider scheduling trips. Once StoveTeam is able to begin scheduling trips they will arrange for the clubs to participate in a work trip, until that time we will receive trip-related updates by signing in to StoveTeam.org/volunteer and StoveTeam's role will be to provide whatever communities are lacking to be able to provide stoves themselves. This means that they would provide funding to pay local people to manufacture all of the parts necessary to build each Justa stove and pay for local people to transport and build the stoves. Local Rotary clubs would not be directly involved in the construction of the stoves.
Total Project Budget: $6,000
$3,000 from each of the Greeley Centennial Rotary and Sequim Rotary Club, consisting of roughly $2,000 club dollars with matching funds of $1,000 from each of our respective districts, depending on fund availability.
Publicity Plan:
Greeley Centennial Rotary and Sequim Sunrise Rotary will write an article as the project progresses updating both the club membership and District 5020 clubs. It is our hope that we'll be able to travel to the site in 2022 so as to have photos of project construction. We will submit the article to the local newspaper as well as post to our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter feeds.
Both clubs are in the process of developing a Cooperating Organization MOU to formalize our collaborative partnership in this endeavor. Tom Hartig is scheduled to make a visit from Sequim, Washington, to Greeley, Colorado in late October 2021 to continue to build better relationships between the two clubs.
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