One Table: A Stove to Save Lives

June 18, 2009

Country: DR Congo

Topics: Conflict & War, Displacement, Emergencies, Food/Nutrition, Hunger, Rural, Women's Empowerment

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 organiser 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 field officers 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. That’s a lifesaving difference for women like Dafroza...

Read the rest of Dafroza's story — and tales of other women who are working hard to feed their families — at onetable.mercycorps.org.