Fuel-Efficient Stove Kit ($45)

Past and current conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo have consigned hundreds of thousands of residents to large, barely habitable camps. The demand for firewood in these camps — to use as cooking fuel — puts extraordinary pressures on Congo's forests, which provide both environmental and economic benefits.

Why Help Is Needed

Thousands of eastern Congo families live in sprawling displacement camps near one of the world's most threatened World Heritage Sites: Virunga National Park. The park is one of the few remaining natural habitats of the mountain gorilla. Fuel demand for cooking fires is causing severe deforestation in the park and threatening the existence of this environmental and economic resource.

Mercy Corps In Action

Families typically need 15 pounds of firewood per day when cooking over an open fire. But daily firewood consumption can be reduced by up to 70 percent with inexpensive fuel-efficient stoves. Mercy Corps teaches women how to build these stoves and how to use effective cooking techniques.

Dafroza's Story

Photo: Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps

For 59-year-old Dafroza Baleberaho, building improved cookstoves isn’t just about preventing climate change, it’s about saving women’s lives.

Dafroza, who had to gather her six children and suddenly flee a rebel attack on her village , works as a trainer and community organizer here in the sprawling, congested Buhimba displacement camp — temporary home to more than 13,000 people who, like her, escaped brutal fighting between eastern Congo’s warring factions. Since taking a two-day class from Mercy Corps last October, she’s helped more than 60 women in the camp construct improved cookstoves.

These stoves — which require only mud, sand, water and rocks to build – consume less than half the firewood as the traditional campfires that families use to boil water and prepare food. Every day, thousands of displaced women leave the relative safety of the camps to seek firewood. Some walk for hours. Unfortunately, armed groups often lay in wait along these routes, ambushing and assaulting women.

“Having to gather less wood — having to go outside the camp less — those are easy things for women here to understand,” Dafroza says.

Fuel-efficient cookstoves are making it easier for women to feed their families. They’re helping save eastern Congo’s already-ravaged environment. And, most importantly, they’re saving the lives of their daughters, mothers, sisters and friends.

Fuel-Efficient Stove Kit ($45)
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Purchase of a Mercy Kit is a symbolic gift that supports Mercy Corps' worldwide programs to help children and families in need. The Breastfeeding Kit, Climate Change Kit, Fuel-Efficient Stove Kit, Cricket Farm Kit, Send an Orphan to School Kit, Plant a Tree Kit, Play to Heal Kit and Uganda Farm Kit supports those specific project funds. Proceeds from the sale of other Mercy Kits will be used where most needed.