BORON

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BORON: BORON

Sidi yahya lgharb, MoroccoSidi yahya lgharb, Morocco
Year Founded:
2014
Organization type: 
nonprofit/ngo/citizen sector
Project Stage:
Scaling
Budget: 
$10,000 - $50,000
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Project Summary
Elevator Pitch

Concise Summary: Help us pitch this solution! Provide an explanation within 3-4 short sentences.

The project Boron aims to make the access to clean energy easier and satisfy the basic needs of heating and cooking by offering a wide range of products that reduce effectively toxic emissions and last longer than traditional charcoal.

WHAT IF - Inspiration: Write one sentence that describes a way that your project dares to ask, "WHAT IF?"

What if we could eradicate deforestation and the damages it leads to? What if people could stop dying from respiratory and cardiovascular diseases?
About Project

Problem: What problem is this project trying to address?

- Around 3 billion people cook and heat their homes using open fires and simple stoves burning biomass (wood, animal dung and crop waste) and coal, especially woman and children , that are exposed for long hours to toxic smokes. -Deforestation and global warming. -Lack of job opportunities.

Solution: What is the proposed solution? Please be specific!

Without a substantial change in policy, the total number of people relying on solid fuels will remain largely unchanged. The use of polluting fuels represents a major burden on sustainable development, that’s why we are exerting efforts to evaluate which new household cooking technologies and fuels produce the least emissions and thus are the most suitable and less harmful to health To address this problem we developed a range of ecological fuels for heating and cooking: the logs for heating and the briquettes for cooking. The products are an organic mixture of olive pomace and sawdust, both products are characterized by a long duration of consumption and a calorific value of 5 kWh/ k
Impact: How does it Work

Example: Walk us through a specific example(s) of how this solution makes a difference; include its primary activities.

More than 10 million people in morocco don’t have access to clean energy and rely on solid fuels for cooking. People of SIDI YAHYA EL GHARB are obliged to gather illegally firewood leading them to either face serious problems with the authorities or rely on using traditional charcoal that daily leaves women and children exposed to toxic smoke. At the beginning, we sensitized people about the danger of old fuels and efficiency of BORON. Then people started trying the product and giving positive feedback about it. The micro entrepreneur has become autonomous and capable of managing his business.

Impact: What is the impact of the work to date? Also describe the projected future impact for the coming years.

During last year we sold 9 tons of Boron logs and created 4 job opportunities. The 4000 people of SIDI YAHYA ELGHARB we reached got access to an appropriate source of energy and also felt more secure and protected. Our project is mature enough to be duplicated in many other areas.

Spread Strategies: Moving forward, what are the main strategies for scaling impact?

BORON will first work with 3rd party distributors to use marketing and advertising strategies to encourage the adoption of ecological logs. We will then work to reach a national level which is a 260M $ market. Our next goal is Africa which represents a market of 149 billion dollars, this market is very accessible since we can customize every raw material available in order to create the relevant solutions adaptable to every context.
Sustainability

Financial Sustainability Plan: What is this solution’s plan to ensure financial sustainability?

We use the money we gather from sponsorships to buy machinery and raw material, the revenue from the sale ensures a realistic profit margin to the entrepreneur, however, he should give back 17% of his monthly revenue in a time interval of 3 years to pay back the micro credit. The money we recover is invested again to duplicate the project in other areas.

Marketplace: Who else is addressing the problem outlined here? How does the proposed project differ from these approaches?

In morocco, there is a small number of companies addressing this issue and the products they propose are expensively commercialized in urban areas. Besides, we set the price of Boron logs to 3 MAD/KG, based on costs of production and purchase capacity of our potential customers. This price makes us stand out of the crowd and gives us a real distinctive value since all our target households can afford our product.
Team

Team

We are a team of engineering students, and we believe that in this battle for life we could change this tough reality. Armed by our skills and our knowledge, we decided to look after this project, full of energy and motivation. We traveled many miles, we felt the pain of these people, we searched, we tried to find solutions, but we never gave up ! And then we succeeded ! Our team is our strength, our strength is in our harmony and our harmony defines our consisting and solid work.