Passionate Care Foundation

In last-mile communities, lack of firewood and a four-hour daily walk to collect new supplies often meant families were undercooking or even skipping their meals in rural Nigeria. Access to firewood or charcoal to cook has always been the main problem poor families are faced daily. To save firewood, meals prepared on the traditional three-stone fire were often undercooked or skipped, affecting people’s nutrition and ability to lead a healthy life. These happen as often as five days a month, especially in the rainy season when dry firewood is hard to find.

The Elevate Prize funding and support will help us distribute 25,000 Powerstove clean cookstoves that self-generate electricity and 50kg wood pellets per poor family reaching 100,000 people and every 25,000 units of Powerstoves distributed avert 40 deaths and 1,295 Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) from reduced cook-smoke exposure that will save over $9 million from cooking fuel which will improve the livelihoods of these families. Also, family's access to Powerstove free electricity provides school children more time to study afterschool, access to ICT and women no longer depended solely on sunlight to complete their household chores and activities, such as sewing, social gatherings and other productive uses. 

I started this Project out of personal childhood experience. As a child that grew up in the village without access to electricity, cooking with firewood was my worse moments (thick smokes, unbearable heat and uncontrollable fires), I suffered incessant coughs, lack of childhood playtime and increased drudgery as a result of searching for firewood and that memory hunted me growing up. So, while growing up, I was overwhelmed how inefficient cooking and lack of electricity has been the twin problems hindering human and socio-economic development of 4Billion people globally. This discovery coupled with losing my mum who worked as a village food vendor to ensure her seven children live and get education, something she did not afford herself, and lived to witnessed after severely battled for 7 years and died from myocardial ischemia – a heart disease she contracted from her many years of inhaling toxic smoke from cooking with firewood shaped my decision to establish this Foundation with the mandate of ensuring access to clean energy for last mile communities. Our vision is to inform and inspire people globally through the power of unparalleled pro-poor renewable technology to change their world in the most affordable, efficient and sustainable pathway.

Every day, millions of women and girls around the world breathe in harmful smoke while cooking and spend hours walking far distances to secure cooking fuel. In most rural Nigerian communities, 1 in 4 women and girls have been raped, assaulted or beaten whenever they went in search of firewood. Reliance on polluting open fires and inefficient fuels leads to health problems (emphysema, cataracts, cancer, heart disease, etc.) and economic burdens that disproportionately impact women and girls. A reduction in time spent collecting fuel and cooking enables women to spend more time with their children, and tend to other responsibilities.

Passionate Care Foundation provides cleaner, more efficient cookstoves and fuels to women while also giving them income-generation opportunities as business owners and entrepreneurs at the center of the clean cookstoves value chain. Increased access to clean cookstoves can reduce the health and safety issues caused by household air pollution and decrease the time women spend collecting cooking fuel. Women can then reallocate this time to educational, income-generating, and leisure activities. Our Foundation's proprietary built-in IoT technology will then help track (in real time), quantify and monetize the carbon offsets generated by the project and reinvest the funds in other community.

Low-income rural populations, particularly women, can often only access fuels that inefficiently convert to energy. They therefore spend large amounts of time or money gathering or purchasing fuel. Investments to mitigate these issues can meaningfully impact their economy, health and safety. For women in conflict zones and IDP camps in Nigeria, collecting cooking fuel is one of the most dangerous activities in Nigeria for women. Exposure to gender-based violence when collecting fuel is greater in conflict zones and IDP camps. Investments to increase access to fuel-efficient cookstoves can reduce the danger these women face in securing fuel.

This Project will benefit 168,000 women and girls. The wood pellets we supply are made from wood/agro wastes at 60% lower charcoal and firewood costs and save each user $300 annually for each user. This savings can be used for other family needs. Also women engaged as Product Ambassadors will experience a 61% increase in average daily income and rural women groups which engages in the supply chain distribution of Products across the last mile to consumers, reduce fuel and health expenditures by 20%. Finally, PCF pays users mostly women $90 annually from carbon credits they generated; enabling them start new business.

During one of trips to the community we work with, a young girl asked her mother “why do I get tears in my eyes when you cook inside the room?” she was looking at her mother while she prepares 'tuwon-shinkafa' a special local delicacy made from rice on a firewood-burning cookstove. The smoke released from the burning wood is quickly filling up the small room of their home. 

Shifting to clean, efficient cooking can improve people’s health, reduce toxic air pollution, increase productivity and protect the environment. But changing cooking practices in households across the world is more complicated than it seems. It requires changing behavior and raising awareness of the benefits of clean cookstoves and fuels, as well as helping businesses to meet this demand with affordable products that customers value.

PCF is facilitating the transition to clean cooking and heating that contributes to fundamental development benefits, including improving people’s health, reducing air pollution, and enabling mothers to spend more time with their families and pursue economic opportunities. Currently we focus on scaling up activity through innovative market-based approaches and by mobilizing private financing, and on applying the lessons we have learned from years of engagement in the sector.