Giving life with the sun: the Darfur solar cookers project.

• Author: Resch, Rhone

For the 200,000 displaced citizens of Darfur living in refugee camps in Chad, the simple task of cooking a meal poses serious risks. Since wood for cooking is scarce in the desert region, refugees must travel several miles outside the camp to gather firewood, where they are highly vulnerable to attacks by the Janjaweed militia and other predators. A 2005 report by Medecins Sans Frontieres found that 82 per cent of rape attacks occur when women are outside the populated villages, usually while searching for firewood. But in the Iridimi camp with 17,000 refugees in eastern Chad, families have cut their firewood use by 50 to 80 per cent, using simple solar cookers to prepare their meals.

Most solar cookers work on sunlight being converted to heat energy that is retained for cooking. While there are many successful designs, the most adaptable to the needs of refugees is CooKit, from Solar Cookers International, which is made of cardboard or other local material and is cut into a specific shape to effectively reflect the solar light rays toward a black metal pot. The pot, when painted black on the outside, absorbs and retains solar heat. A clear polypropylene bag tied around it creates an insulating barrier and allows the pot to easily reach 250° Fahrenheit (about 121° Celsius), which is more than enough to cook several litres of food in a few hours.

The KoZon Foundation, a Dutch non-governmental organization that trains women in developing countries to solar-cook, brought the devices to the Iridimi camp for the first time in February 2005, after it obtained funding from the Dutch Foundation for Refugees and a project approval from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). KoZon volunteer, Derk Rijks, and Chadian trainee, Marie-Rose Neloum, provided 100 cookers to several women refugees for a demonstration, which proved to be a success.

A second demonstration was organized in April 2005, in which KoZon trained and tested the ability of the refugees themselves to manufacture 120 cookers, emphasizing the creation of a self-sustaining economic activity. A basic workshop, completed in February 2006, provided the necessary tools and space for the manufacture of the cookers. Several refugees were also trained as "auxiliary trainers", who would teach others how to solar-cook.

The Solar Cooker Project accelerated in May 2006, when a coalition of 55 synagogues in southern California in the United States, the Jewish World Watch (JWW)...