I tend not call these projects because we
need to have a longer term commitment than that.
Sometimes these are communities we want to be engaged in for a lifetime.
But again, as far as I'm concerned, implementation
is most of what is required, at the grass
roots level and, that requires the right people
and it requires the right place to work in.
>> My name is Paul Munsen, I'm the president of Sun Ovens International.
We're manufacturer of solar powered cooking ovens.
I didn't invent the sun oven, but one of my clients was
a good friend of the inventor of the sun oven.
Frankly, I knew nothing about cooking.
I knew nothing about solar.
I knew nothing about the, anything in the developing world, but as I started
to work with him on a pro bono basis to just help him out,
I saw the, the need for sun ovens in developing countries around the world and
because of that need I, just released, worked harder with it and can't
say that I was any more successful than he is or he was with it.
It's just that, our ability since, 1997
to communicate around the world has changed totally.
He'd wait an average of four to six weeks for letters to go
back and forth to developing countries and trying to make a project work.
Or rely on faxes that never knew if they went through or didn't.
And now we can, this morning I've communicated
with people on three different continents already.
And don't think anything of it.
People find our website everywhere and we can communicate.
So I can't say we're any smarter than he is.
It's just that.
We've been able to have better communication around the world.
And, so, I put together some investors and we came up with enough cash to pay off his
bank loans and then move the manufacturing of the sun ovens from the Milwaukee
area to the suburbs of Chicago.
And we've been located in Elburn Illinois,
about 40 miles west of Chicago, since 1998.
The need for sun ovens is that there's still 2.5 billion people in the world
who cook with wood, charcoal, or animal dung as their primary method of cooking.
And when a woman cooks over an open fire, she inhales
the same amount of smoke as smoking three packs of cigarettes
a day.
Each year in the continent of Africa alone 1.6 million
children under the age of five, die of respiratory diseases.
In more than half the African countries more children under the age of
five, die of respiratory diseases than they do of HIV/AIDS and malaria combined.
And, the primary cause of respiratory disease is when the mothers
are cooking with the baby at their back or their breast and
the babies are inhaling the smoke.
So, the effect it has on the health of women and children is just devastating.
And so in many of these countries there is a great abundance of sunshine.
So, people being able to cook with the sun can
have a huge effect on the health of women and children.
Also, the issue of deforestation is getting worse and worse around the world.
As you look
at countries like Ethiopia, Haiti you know, Haiti is
almost 99 percent deforested and prior to the 2010
earthquake a typical family spent more than half their
total household income just buying charcoal to cook with.
So, in places like Haiti that's blessed with an abundance of sun, sunshine.
The ability to be able to use that
sunshine rather than have to use wood or charcoal.
And the ability then to take money that was being
spent for charcoal and use it for much more productive things.
In many cases, like food, is really strong.
So, we've decided to do everything we can.
And to promote solar cooking in deforested developing
countries that are blessed with the abundance of sunshine.
If you on on the internet, you'll find plans for solar ovens.
Without exaggeration,
I'm sure you can find 5,000 different websites
or plans on how to build solar ovens.
So, the idea of a solar oven is not new, it's been around for centuries.
But almost everybody who approaches solar cooking, approaches it based on cost.
So the assumption is, well somebody can make something out of
cardboard and aluminum foil, that's only going to cost less than $10.
That should be sufficient and should work and the fact that a
pat of rice that would cook on a three stone fire in you
know, 45 minutes to an hour, would take four or five hours in
a cardboard aluminum cooker is a thing that people think, well, so what?
And so, much of solar cooking has always
been approached based on costs and approached by non-profits.