Elburn company to help Haiti with solar ovens
Now more than ever, Haiti needs a better way to cook food than over charcoal fires, the leader of an Elburn company believes.
Paul Munsen, president of Sun Ovens International, is traveling there Sunday to train people how to use Sun Ovens, which operate on solar power. As displaced Haitians form tent cities, Sun Ovens can help cook food and purify water for families and large crowds.
On Jan. 28 it shipped two Villager Sun Ovens, 160 Global Sun Ovens, 200 cardboard solar cookers and 2,000 water pasteurization indicators to the country.
It is also donating more than 297 of the Global model ovens that were made in Haiti and survived the hurricane intact. The Global Sun Ovens are capable of cooking enough food to feed eight people a day. The Villager can cook 1,200 meals a day.
Munsen has worked with Haitians for 11 years, including establishing the assembly plant in northern Haiti. (New parts have also been shipped to Haiti, so production can resume.)
On this trip, Munsen is going to be training trainers. Unfortunately, he has to do it because the person who has done the job for years, an American missionary, was killed in the earthquake.
The company asked its retail customers if they would donate money for the Haitian relief project. Bright Hope, an aid group out of Hoffman Estates, is the agency distributing the ovens. Rotary International service clubs often work with Sun Ovens to place ovens in developing nations from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
The solar ovens can bake, roast, boil and steam food, and purify water, reaching a temperature of about 360 degrees. The biggest obstacle to getting people to cook with them is overcoming cultural habits, Munsen said.
“Cooking is always a very personal thing to women,” he said, noting many are reluctant at first to change from the cooking method with which they are familiar – wood, charcoal or dung. “But once they have used it for a few days, they love it,” he said, calling it “the magic box.”
In Port-au-Prince, a family might spend half of its income on charcoal for cooking, Munsen said, oftentimes spending more money on fuel than it spends on food. The charcoal is made from trees in the now mostly denuded Haitian forest. Environmental experts say Haiti went from being 60 percent forested in 1923 to 2 percent now, leading to problems with soil erosion and mudslides.
Cooking over charcoal also leads to lung and eye problems for the cook, who inhales smoke while standing over the fire for long periods.
For more information about Sun Ovens’ efforts, visit sunoven.com.
