Rotary Club of Naperville - Solar Ovens Benefit People in Need

November 2006

Once again, the generosity of the Rotarians of the Naperville Club is benefiting adults and children affected with AIDs and orphaned children. The solar ovens provide communities with an available source of energy for cooking nutritious meals for those that are suffering and for children that need the nutrition filled ‘7 grains’ softened for ease in digestion. Rather than having women travel miles in search of firewood and often times along dangerous routes, the solar ovens provide a ready source for cooking using the daily sun as the energy source.

Malawi – Stephanos Children’s Home for Orphans
A Villager sun oven was provided to Stephanos Children’s Home for Orphans in Blantyre,Malawi in Africa. Through a matching grant with financial support from our Club and Naperville Rotary Charities, the Rotary Club of Limbe provided the oversight and in-country support as the solar oven was delivered to the Stephanos Orphanage in late August, 2006.

Stephanos Children’s Home for Orphans will use the oven to bake bread for the children twice a day. Since they have an abundance of sunlight, they will use the solar oven during all hours and will bake bread to bring to market.

There are 105 of the poorest and most vulnerable children that live at Stephanos Children’s Home and another 100 orphans living in the surrounding community that attend the school Monday through Friday and eat their meals there with the other children.

Malawi. Malawi is a land locked country in the southeast part of Africa. Approximately one out of seven adults is infected with AIDs and the average life expectancy of adults is about 41.7 years. Nearly 94.4 out of 1,000 live births ends in death within the first 30 days of life. While AIDs is a major contributing factor, unsanitary water, poor nutrition, malaria, and hepatitis A are also major contributing causes to the high infant mortality rate and early adult deaths. (Compare these figures to the U.S. where the average life expectancy of adults is nearly 78 years old and the infant mortality rate is 6.4 deaths for every 1,000 live births.)

Project Initiated. Like most Rotary International projects, this project took about 20 months from beginning to end. The Rotary Club of Limbe first contacted the Temple Solar Project in December 2004 requesting a solar oven and then our Club took on the project. Once the decision was made by our Club, a matching grant application was submitted and accepted by The
Rotary Foundation and the necessary financial paperwork filed and then the matching grant award was provided to our Club --- taking about 8 months to complete this part of the process. Once the funds were received, the Villager solar oven was built and the paperwork for shipping and customs were prepared. David Paul, the Rotarian from the Rotary Club of Limbe, was outstanding in ensuring all paperwork was processed properly and there were no hidden taxes applied to this humanitarian project. When the oven was released to David at customs, a minor mishap occurred with the cart sent with the oven that is used to transport the oven – the wheels were missing. The Rotary Club of Limbe then went searching for wheels that fit the cart so that the solar oven could reach its final destination and be of service to the children.

While we sometimes never meet our fellow Rotarians on some of the matching grant projects, David was a pleasure to work with and correspond with over the past 18 plus months ---he embodies the true Rotarian spirit and is always working on Rotary projects in Malawi. He said the Villager solar oven has created quite a stir among neighboring communities --- all wanting a solar oven for their community!

David and the children of Stephanos Children’s Home send their warmest thanks and appreciation to the Rotary Club of Naperville.

Upendo Village – Naivasha, Kenya

Forty eight Global, family size, solar ovens arrived at Upendo Village in September, 2006 after more than two years after the project was originally started.

As our Rotary Club has sponsored other projects at Upendo Village, many Rotarians are familiar with Upendo Village. Upendo Village is a unique approach to addressing the issues surrounding women with AIDs and their soon to be orphaned children, that may or may not also be infected with AIDs.

The Sisters of Upendo Village try to keep the mother and children together in a home setting for as long as possible. As it is important for children to be with family and loved ones, the goal of Upendo Village is to keep the mothers strong for as long as possible so that they might share with their children their love and ability to understand life outside of an institutional setting.

As the area surrounding Upendo Village is completely deforested, the women travel miles for firewood for cooking and making cereal for their infants. Often times the women are attacked for their firewood and after spending hours on the road for firewood, they return home with no firewood. The challenges the women and their children faced were so grievous that the Rotarians of the Rotary Club of Naivasha set up a “Safe House” and the Rotarians are the rescue team for rescuing the women and children.

With the family solar ovens, the women will not have to put themselves or their children at risk and will not have to compromise their health by traveling long distances for firewood when they are ill.

Rotary Club of Naperville’s Many Contributions. Our first project with Upendo Village was to supply them with funds to purchase HIV/AIDs rapid screening tests. Once they knew the volume of community residents infected, they approach the Kijabe Hospital in Nairobi and were able to get many of their patients into antiretroviral drug treatment to slow down the disease’s progression.

Coupled with the nutritional and spiritual counseling the Sisters of Upendo Village provided and the anti-retroviral drugs, many residents are surviving longer than anyone could have anticipated.

The recent addition of the water well will provide great benefit to the community residents as they will not have to travel 2 miles for clean water and are now able to have animals for milk
and helping to till the soil and transport water for crops.

Kenya. Similar to Malawi, the adult life expectancy is much lower than the United States and is about 49 years of age. Infant mortality is a little bit better than Malawi but is still about 9 times higher than the U.S. at about 60 infants deaths per 1,000 live births. Similar to Malawi, the leading causes of death are water borne illnesses, contaminated food, poor sanitation, hepatitis A, and in some parts of Kenya, malaria.

A Long Road Traveled…. And Lessons Learned. Not all governments embrace humanitarian donations in the same way --- some have open arms and await any donations and others often
times charge fees or value added taxes for donations.

Up until the solar ovens for Upendo Village, all of our contributions had been to Upendo Village for funding of supplies or developments within Kenya, with the Rotary Club of Naivasha providing oversight. With the solar ovens, the technology is so new that the ovens had to be transported and go through customs clearance. Despite the efforts of the Sisters of Upendo
Village and the Rotary Club of Naivasha, we could not get the customs and value added tax (VAT) reduced to a reasonable amount of money. The solar ovens sat in Antwerp as we did not have the funds requested by the government which ranged anywhere from $8,000 to $18,000 --- at times more than the cost of the ovens!

Finally in September, 2006 --- with much publicity and eyes on Kenya for Senator Obama’s visit, the VAT and customs clearance fees were reduced to about $2,300 and the Temple Solar Project Committee raised the funds to secure the VAT and customs clearance.

Sebastien Alex of the Rotary Club of Naivasha was our key contact throughout this project. Almost weekly e-mails were exchanged over this time period and he kept up his persistence and positive attitude in seeing this project completed. He and other Rotarians also arranged for the ovens to be transported from the port of entry in Kenya to Upendo Village --- accompanying them all the way so they would arrive fully and safely to the community.

Sister Florence, the residents of Upendo Village, and the Rotarians of the Rotary Club of Naivasha send their warmest thanks and appreciation to the Rotary Club of Naperville for their comprehensive support of Upendo Village and for completing yet another project for the community.