What impact have you had?
This is an idea in the concept stage. It has yet to be implemented.
Problem
Over 3 billion people eat food that is prepared from an open fire from solid fuel combustion like burning wood. Often times this is in a kitchen-like room with no ventilation and no chimney. From Latin America to Africa and Asia, many women, including potential and current mothers, have suffered health effects as a result, including chronic respiratory disease. Along with the women are infants and young children who are usually with mothers as they prepare food. So infants and young children suffer from the same exposure to deadly smoke and toxins. Each year hundreds of thousands of children die due to chronic respiratory disease from such exposure. Additionally such indoor air pollution has been shown to be correlated to other diseases such as lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and acute childhood lower respiratory infections.
What is needed is more investment in both research and development of improved cook stoves to increase their efficiency and reduce their emissions and greater production and comprehensive distribution of these cook stoves around the globe to the places where we need it most.
Actions
My idea is to leverage government, NGO, foundation, and private money to create a cook stove company that both manufactures different kinds of cook stoves for different countries and does research and development for continuous improvements in efficiency and decrements in emissivity which addresses both maternal and early childhood health as well as directly affects the environment and contribution to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Results
This is an idea in the concept stage. It has yet to be implemented.
What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? Please address each year separately, if possible.
In the first year, it will require start-up funding such as small business innovation grants, foundation grants, government grants, and loans. There is significant momentum that such grants exist for this work if one wishes to partner with the government, for instance. It will also require funding that is multi-year and not just for year one. Thirdly, it will require proper researchers to determine throughout the year the nature of the problem in each region and developing country. It's important to know what type of stove is needed such as a flat stove for tortillas or pupusas in Latin America or a bowl-type stove in West Africa for stew, for instance.
In the second year, more funding is needed as we move closer to implementing the first stoves, especially funding for personnel. People with expertise in production, design, management, research, development, transportation, and distribution are needed. And they will be hired. Cities and rural areas in regions with developing countries will be chosen as the first locations to start the project. And we will expand from these seminal centers.
In the third year, we need to hire testers in different countries. Since the research & development group is centralized in the US, we need testers in different countries to test the stoves in context. The first stoves will be produced, transported, distributed, and sold while the research and development group continues to test it out. We will hire development workers and social scientists to introduce the product into the societies and to evaluate the public reaction and affinity or aversion for the product.
What would prevent your project from being a success?
If the proper funding isn't secured it could fail. Patent issues could prevent it from moving forward or would require more innovation and development before beginning in the first place. Lack of multi-year funding could be a problem. Trade barriers and foreign policy issues might prevent entrance or business in a foreign country. Lack of acceptance of the cook stove or miscontextualizing the cook stove to a particular people group in a particular region would be fatal. Creating a cook stove that is cleaner for health and the environment but does not cook all foods eaten by a particular group would doom it to failure. Bad business models, improper pricing, poor expansion planning, bad management can all hinder the project's success. Even with proper access into a country, legal ownership over the design, and an effective stove, lack of good transport routes or established infrastructure may preclude distribution (this is why we want to use Pepsi's expertise). At this point proper pricing becomes very important to encourage people to properly value the stove and to still make it affordable.
