THE OLIVE BRANCH FOR CHILDREN
BETTER FUEL CHOICES
The Olive Branch for Children (TOBFC) Better Fuel Choices program is part of our Climate Care pillar and responds to complex needs identified with the communities we serve. Although the program is a Climate Care initiative, it impacts many different aspects of people’s daily lives, with a focus of helping vulnerable women, the elderly, and the disabled.
The areas served by TOBFC are among the worst impacted by deforestation and land marginalization in Tanzania. The Tanzanian government is prioritizing shifting households from firewood and charcoal to gas cooking stoves.
TOBFC has worked with communities since 2019 to facilitate their shift away from solid fuels that escalate deforestation, environmental degradation, and pulmonary and eye disease. While liquified petroleum gas (LPG) is not a perfect environmental solution, it helps to address the deforestation emergency and is the most affordable and accessible solution presently available to rural Tanzanian communities.
The Better Fuel Choices program facilitates the widespread distribution of information about the consequences of continued deforestation and the benefits of switching to cooking gas in the areas served by TOBFC. We educate communities and individuals about the negative health and environmental impacts of using solid fuels through community-based and door-to-door campaigns. The program also connects households in need to subsidized gas tanks, cooking kits and stoves. For older adults and people living with disabilities that are in our long-term subsidized program, we provide free gas refills through our Kutunza Gas Store program.
Why TOBFC Started the Better Fuel Choices Program
Many households, especially those led by vulnerable women, continue to use wood fuels to prepare meals because they cannot afford to purchase cooking stoves and tanks that use cleaner fuels. Other families have found the lack of access to gas tanks prevents them from switching from wood to gas cooking. Our community research reveals that a family of four uses the equivalent of 20 large trees per year for cooking.
Collecting and cooking with wood fuel contributes to environmental degradation but also has many other negative impacts on women’s health, ability to work and food security. Vulnerable women spend hours every week securing firewood or charcoal. Women must then spend more hours preparing wood fires and cooking – time that could be used instead for engaging in business or agricultural activities. Long cooking times and access to wood fuel make it difficult for mothers to provide breakfast for students before they go to school, resulting in many missed meals and impacting educational success.
Our Mobile Medical Clinic connects to hundreds of women every year suffering from pulmonary diseases. Burning wood and charcoal creates particle pollution and releases toxic air pollutants. Fine particles can trigger heart attacks, stroke, irregular heart rhythms, and heart failure. Our Mobile Medical Clinic also serves many women with eye issues, including acute conjunctivitis and cataracts linked to cooking with wood. The types of chronic conditions that women experience from cooking with wood and charcoal convinced our staff that TOBFC needed to start an education program for all women and communities on the benefits of cooking with gas and to help vulnerable women switch.
Through our other Community Care programs, TOBFC identifies female-headed households that are using firewood and charcoal for cooking and connects them to the Better Fuel Choices program. These vulnerable women are supplied with a new gas cooking stove and gas tank and trained how to safely use the stove. Women using these new stoves report better health and many also find it more affordable, once the capital cost of the stove is overcome.​
Some families in rural communities can afford the purchase of a gas cooking stove, but the lack of stores to refill gas tanks can be a barrier to purchasing new stoves. To improve access to gas tank refills, TOBFC now operates two Kutunza Gas Stores that are centrally located for a number of villages.
Once vulnerable women are provided with gas stoves and tanks through the Kutunza Gas Store program and there is easier access to tanks for rural communities, gas cooking is sustainable for almost all families. It is estimated that shifting a total of 2,000 households to gas will save approximately 40,000 trees per year.
Better Fuel Choices directly addresses a key environmental issue and through that action helps to tackle complex community challenges. This Climate Care program also contributes to supporting gender equity, women’s health, and financial and food security for families.
