31 July 2008

Since we arrived in Brasília, with our mountain of luggage, we have been on a roller coaster of activities!

The next day we already had a lunch with our Host Club and representants of the college UPIS. The President of RC Cinco de Dezembro received our little banner and the letter of our President which he translated for the members.

The following day my Brazilian counterpart Maria do Carmo, took me to several places in order to buy the necessary material and to the printer where they had 100 teacher’s manuals ready.

On Friday we had our first meeting with community leaders in a nearby little town, Sobradinha. They are eager to start the workshop, so that is what we will be doing today. I will try to send some pictures and the I'll have to run to get ready for the classes, Maria do Carmo will pick us up at 7:00 AM ! We also will have lunch at RC Lago Norte and Thursday morning a meeting with a Congress man.

Several journalists want interviews also for local TV.

We will keep you all posted.

Irene

7 August 2008

Hello everyone, we’ll send some more pictures soon. Our workshop is going well, yesterday the students (all adult women) made 2 Solar Cookers, it took just 1 hour to make one. Before yesterday we made a Rocket Stove out of an oil can. It works very well and all our lunches are solar cooked!

Irene

8 August 2008

We are almost at the end of our first week workshop, I admit we still had to learn how to stitch everything together, I forgot how different things are in Brazil! For instance some of the women were absent after the two first days, when I asked why I was told that several of them do not even have the money for the bus ($ 1.50 !) We hardly can imagine such a poverty!

On Monday we had lunch at the RC Lago Norte, I gave them the banner of our club and got theirs to take home to my own club, after I talked about our project, a gentleman stopped me at the pulpit and told he had an organization of micro-loans for low income women who want to start a business and he thinks our projects fits perfectly in their aims. He wants us to do a workshop in a community he already organized. Every day we have other community leaders asking us to come to their place. I am afraid there are far more than we can handle!

Our participants are already very skilled in making solar cookers!

This morning we had an appointment with a congressman who is active in the Education, Science and Technology sector. Next week he will visit our workshop. Tomorrow at 7:00 AM a TV crew will come to see us working, we will have to get up very early, it takes us 45 minutes to reach the place of our workshop! But it will be good publicity!

Governor Ronaldo Carneiro also will send a cameraman to make a little movie for the Brazilian Rotarian TV, which reaches all the Rotary Clubs of Brazil.

Big hug for everybody

Irene

On Friday 8/8 we graduated our first class of 18 new adepts of the Integrated Solar Cooking Method! The previous days we had our lunches cooked by the sun! The women were very happy and grateful, I was almost suffocated by the hugs and had to sign all the teacher’s manuals. It was evident it will help them a lot to economize bottled gaz and fire wood. I learned that in remote places the gaz supply is very difficult, the delivery trucks dont go because of bad or inexistent roads. They have to walk with a wheelbarrow to the nearest sales point, very often at several kilometers from their homes. The most funny situation was Michael , who got a helper named Hamilton, teach how to make the CooKits and the rocket stove! His helper became very fast a specialist in sign language, only when it came to more complicated explanations they called me.

Thursday evening about 8:00 PM we had a phone call from TV Record, they wanted to do the program on Friday morning, not later than 7:00 AM!

At 5:00 in the morning they already called us to tell they were on their way to install the equipment!

Well we made it in record time, but I had to be re-initiated in reckless driving! At that hour of the day lots of inhabitants of the sattelite towns (as they call the bedroom communities here) are on their way to Brasília to their jobs. Discipline in traffic is absolutely inexistent, the boldest has the right of way! I feeled like a chased gangster in a bad movie. I commented to Michael that it was really stressful but he replied it was far more nerve wrecking to be my passenger. No wonder the Brazilians are among the best automobile racers in the world!

The TV crew became very interested when they saw our students had made 3 solar cookers and a rocket stove themselves, it was too early to show how the CooKit works but we lit the rocket stove and everybody was amazed to see such a strong fire with only some twigs. The reporter proposed to make a whole program with a class as long as we give their TV the exclusivity!

This week my Brazilian right arm, Maria do Carmo, has to work and I was concerned how to reach the venue for our next workshop, but after everybody had seen us on TV, the mayor of the little town came to visit us with his staff, he was so amazed about our work he offered us to stay at the Pro Familia place for the next workshop. I told him that the problem would be for the participants to reach us, since money for the bus is a burden. He offered to put a van at the disposition of the women. Anyhow Maria do Carmo had arranged transport for us with the Police! They would pick us up with the police van and bring us to our destination, you imagine the effect that would have on our students!

Governor Ronaldo Carneiro will ask the local Rotarians to help with transport (there are 63 RC around Brasília!)

The solar cookers we sent from Sacramento are still somewhere at the Postal Service, it is rather frustrating. I am very happy I brought several in our luggage, we need them for the classes and now we know our students are very able to make their own.

Saturday we had a lot of errands to do and Michael badly needed a haircut and a beardtrim, he started to look like Buffalo Bill! Of course I had to explain to the barber exactely what he wanted! In the evening we were so tired we skipped the dinner with the Masonry and stayed home enjoying our friend's beautiful garden.

Sunday was for friends an family, we have been rolling from breakfast, into lunch, happy hour and finally dinner. Fortunately everywhere Michael found interesting people to chat with in English and who could answer his questions about Brazil, and I had a little respite from translation!

This will be it for now, more news next time!

Irene & Michael

11 August 2008

13 August 2008 - Our Host and Hostess

For anyone who may be interested, here is a bit on where we are staying and on our host and hostess.

We are, of course, in Brasília, the Capitol of Brazil. The weather here is very mild: the elevation is just under 4,000 feet (somewhat more than twice that of Mokelumne Hill), but the latitude is only 16°
(Moke Hill is about 39°).

I get somewhat disoriented at times, because the sun is always to the North, not South like at home. And there is the Southern Cross in the night sky over the South Pole (which I always have a hard time finding) instead of Polaris over the North.

Also, when driving along the Atlantic coast as we did last visit, I was disturbed (being a California guy) because the ocean was always on the wrong side!

It’s now August, but bear in mind we’re on the other side of the equator. So August here is like February at home. (I hope it’s not too hot there.) We sleep with our windows open -- without screens! And we have yet to see a mosquito or other flying bugs. I don’t know how they do that, and I’m reluctant to ask. (However, bugs aside, I think they must spray testosterone over the city every morning: sex is palpable here.)

Brasília didn’t even exist the year Jack Kennedy was elected president (1960). It was less than fifteen years old when Irene came to work here in the Netherlands Embassy as an interpreter. The architecture of Brasília is unlike anything I have seen anywhere in the world. The only comparison I have been able to come up with is the city “Superman” was born in on the planet Krypton! (It was a drawing in the strip explaining that Krypton was on the verge of exploding, which was why baby Superman was being sent off in a rocket ship. I think I saw it in 1937 or ‘38.)

I will attach a few pictures of some of my favorite buildings here, and of the unbelievably beautiful bridge connecting the north and south sides of the lake, which divides the city.

Brasília is the “Distrito Federal” and has the same relation to the rest of Brazil as Washington DC has to the states. The population is now more than two million. As the new Capitol, it was designed for growth and expansion, and with an incredibly intelligent intra-city road system. (There is hardly a stop light anywhere: everything is clover-leafs and turnabouts).

But in the ‘60s they figured there might, someday, be as many as 200,000 autos here. Today, though, it’s more than double that, making driving difficult and parking nearly impossible. Except for us old farts. Brasília is a city of young people, only a very small percentage are over 65. So the city has many parking spots reserved for anyone over 65 or handicapped. (Also, old people have priority, and get to go to the head-of-the-line in line, at banks, grocery stores, airports, etc. No one in line seems to resent this.)

Provisions for lodging were made for us by Rotary, but Irene has many friends here, and they fight over who we are going to stay with each time we come here! This time, we are staying (again, as we did four and a half years ago) with “Bunny” and Isabel Persjin in a large and lovely home in “Lago Norte”. (A few pictures of the backyard are attached.) They have been close and devoted friends of Irene’s for several decades.

Bunny owns and operates a large and well attended fitness center, and is the official Brazilian Government translator for Dutch, English and Portuguese official documents. He and Irene worked together on the Amazon Treaty project where they were required to do simultaneous translations of Dutch to Portuguese and back, and some work in French and English. (The Amazon Basin, which is twice the size India, includes portions of Bolivia, Peru, Equador, Columbia, Venezuela, British-French-Dutch Guianas (Dutch Guiana is Suriname) and of course Brazil. Brazil’s part of the whole Amazon basin is about the size of India. It is also as big as the lower 48 states.

Isabel is an accomplished and well-known artist here in Brazil who has had many successful exhibitions, and who provided the graphic design for some thirty-five Brazilian postage stamps.

22 August 2008 - Class Graduations

Today we graduated our third class of 24 monitors of the ISCM in a small but busy satelite town named São Sebastião! I have to admit that I am rather tired, I had to go to my Chinese acupuncture doctor in order to treat my swollen ankles, and this morning I had Michael stay home for some extra rest. It takes a lot of energy, not only to teach, but to haul all the necessary material, load and unload the car, clean up after the class, buy food for the solar lunches etc. But we are very very satisfied with the results of our workshops.

It is amazing how fast the students are able to make the stoves, and how much creativity they have been showing. It was interesting to see all the men that showed up for this workshop. One of them is a metal worker who was very helpful with cutting of the pipes for the rocket stove’s chimney. He ended up making templates for everybody. This class is ready and willing to organize their own workshops in the coming days in order to teach people from further away communities, mostly in the rural area. They also intend to organize weekend workshops in the schools of São Sebastião. I am very proud of my students!

The biggest hit at lunch were the eggs cooked in a black (but clean!) sock. I saw the women chatting between themselves, they didn't believe the eggs would cook that way and were sure I had made a mistake, but everybody enjoyed the hard boiled eggs. I also made great use of parts I cut off of our Club's "Bowl-a-Thon" black T-shirts: very useful to cover baking sheets in the solar oven! And also for lining the hay baskets, a rather alternative way to use our T-shirts!

Before the end of the class, some kids ran away in order to get big pieces of cardboard to make their own templates to take home!

After our first three workshops I came to the conclusion that there is no need for a 5-day workshop, two and a half day are more than sufficient. I suppose it is because I speak Portuguese fluently and communicate easily with the students in their own language, which will make it possible for us to organize more workshops than initially forseen. I guess It takes longer only when you need the help of interpreters.

Monday evening I had dinner at the Governor’s home club and tomorrow we will have lunch with our host club, Cinco de Dezembro. The college UPIS wants us to do a workshop with the students. It will be a nice opportunity to show Bob Metcalf’s Portable Microbiology Laboratory which is too sophisticated for the people of the low income communities.

On monday we will teach in Aguas Lindas, a community about 100 km from Brasília. Since there seems to be lots of violence and criminality, Maria do Carmo thought Michael should not go, he looks too much like a wealthy gringo! I can camouflage myself since I am always wearing the Rotary Shines T-shirt as well as my team members. But she has arranged a police escort to take us this time, and bring us home after the workshop. We will have to stay overnight and will be cared for by local Rotarians. A whole new experience! Thursday and Friday and probably Monday morning we will go to another community, further than Sobradinho, where we had our first workshop.

There was an article about our work in the local newspaper, I will try to scan it. (Of course, it's in Portuguese!)

On the pictures you can see I had a big banner made telling that RC Jackson is the sponsor of this project.

That will be it for now, the pictures will speak more than my words!

I miss my own hot tub very much. It would be nice to relax in warm water after those tiresome days.

More news later, probably after Aguas Lindas.

Irene

29 August 2008 - Here’s are our adventures of the last week!

Monday morning very early, a Rotarian Federal Police Officer came to pick us up and take us on an incredible busy road to Aguas Lindas, which took us a 1 1/2 hour ride. The poverty there is inimaginable for us in the United States, most of the streets are unpaved and very dusty. There is a lot of violence, all the houses, the poorest as well as the better ones, have bars on doors and windows and even the dogs an cats in the streets look undernourished. That is why our Police friend Samson, kept us under his wings the whole time, we were his house guests in spite of his wife Antonia being very embarresd to receive gringos! But when she heard I spoke Portuguese she was relieved. They gave themselves far too much work in order to please us and could not believe we could adapt to simple surroundings.

We visited an orphanage, organized by an older lady who, with a few helpers , support from Rotary and donations of food and clothing from private organiztions and people, takes care of 48 children, from babies to teenagers.

We held our workshop at the local Rotary Club, one of the most modests I ever saw!

Again we were amazed to see how fast the participants are able to reproduce the different models of stoves and how inventive they are. It is touching how they all consider us their best friends and insist to stay in touch after the workshops. Our most dedicated participant was Maria Cecilia Gabriel, the President of the RC of Samabaia, where she takes care of a very destitute community. She would like very much to have a partnership with our Jacksons Club and I think she will be an excellent multiplicator of the Integrated Solar Cooking Method. I have to meet her in order to prepare the Matching Grants application.

I also paid visits to several local Rotary Clubs with Governor Ronaldo Carneiro on his tour of official visits and wants to take the opportunity to present me and talk about our project. The Rotarians are delighted to hear I came from California. Because of that I very often only see my bed after midnight! Since Michael does not want to miss a iota of a single speech of the Obama campaign, he stays home in the evening to watch TV!

The students of our workshop in São Sebastião will give their own teaching workshop on Saturday September 6 and want us to come and see how well they learned! And our metalworker Nelmo student’s wife told me yesterday since the classes she mostly cooks on her rocket stove, while her husband already made several stoves and has orders for more. He also will provide us with pipes for the rocket stove of our next workshops, he makes them from flattened oil or paint cans. What a wonderful result of our work!

On Thursday I had an audience with the former Vice President of Brazil and current Senator Marco Maciel, after waiting for some time in his cabinet, he send an assistent to take me to the Senate, they were in session and he could not leave for long time, but invited us to have a cup of tea in the nearby cafetaria. He agreed, depending on the date, to be present at the final graduation of our students, which will be very impressive for them. He likes the project very much and wants me to consider a prochain project in Recife, his home State. We became good friends when I founded the Cultural Institute Maurice van Nassau , a link between Brazil and the Netherlands, when I was still working at the Embassy.

In the evening I went to the meeting of the RC Peninsula Norte, one of the bigger ones of Brasília and surroundings, the meeting took place in the Club of Congress and the dinner in a very upscaled restaurant. Yes, this is a country of enormous contrasts.

This morning we gave a demonstration for the students at Campus II of the UPIS, a very beatiful place at 25 km from Brasília, where they have the Faculties of Agriculture, Zootechny and Veterinary. I showed the the Portable Microbiological Laboratory of Prof. Bob Metcalf and the way how to pasteurize water in the solar cooker and use the Wapis. But they also want us to give a workshop for them to learn to make the CooKits and Rocket Stoves and learn how to cook with our system.

Saturday morning, August 30 2008

I just heard from Maria do Carmo that a big group of people in Planaltina, want us to give a demonstration for them today! It will not be a workshop, but whomever wants can join our workshop on Monday at Fercal.

Well, we went for that great demonstrations and....nobody showed up! I know, they have different conception of time her but after almost an hour waiting we decided it was time to go back home. Since we had had no breakfast, we looked for a cafetaria or any place where we could have a cup of coffee, but everything seemd to be closed. Finally we found a grocery store, the kind I saw in Brazil the first time I arrived here in 1961! We had a cup of very strong and very sweet coffee surrounded by bananas and bottles of cooking oil. You’ll see the picture!

This morning (Sunday) I went to a Rotary House of Friendship Meeting organized by Ivani, Governor Carneiro’s wife. I met over 250 women with big expectations to see solar cooked food, but it rained the whole morning! I only could tell about the method and our workshops between the manager of an adoptation organization and a plastic surgeon. The ladies asked me if we could do a workshop only for them. Since they all take care of low income communities I think I hit the epicenter of multiplication for the Integrated Solar Cooking Method. We have a list of 35 participants, they even asked if they could bring the husbands to learn to make the rocket stove, just what we want!

This afternoon we went back to São Sebastião where we ordered several stove pipes for the next rocket stoves made by our friend Nelmo. He made a far cheaper version than the first galvanized pipes we bought in a hardware store. Nelmo made the pipes from flattened cans and attached them with small pieces of wire instead of rivets, almost all recycled material.

Wednesday morning, September 10 2008

Dear Friends, everything is OK only very hectic! Michael has been inventing, with the help of one of our students who is a metalworker, a better and far more cheaper way to make the Rocket Stove. Now he is putting together a booklet with illustrations. He also ordered better tools for cutting the metal in the USA.

I am still running at 100 miles per hour, at every workshop we have people asking for more! We learned a lot and could make the teaching more efficient and came to the conclusion that hands-on workshop bring better results.

Last Saturday our students of São Sebastião showed us their ability to teach others! From 9:00 to 1:00 PM they made 8 solar cookers and 2 rocket stoves! Most of them brought recycled cardboard and even metal for the cheminy of the rocket stove.

Tomorrow I will have lunch with the President of Planetary Union, an organization of people concerned about environment, pollution, over consuming etc. They want to make a TV program of a workshop and organize several more.

When we come back home after a day of teaching, we just have enough energy left to sit in the garden, sip a glass of wine and watch an adorable family of marmousets who come begging for food!

I am also working with local Rotary Clubs to put together a system for the continuity of this project and get the funds for it, which also requires a lot of work and energy and paper work!

That will be it for today, we are leaving for another workshop. We have zillions of pictures but Michael was so much involved with his rocket stove plans, he had no time to prepare the sending of the pics.

Big hug for verybody, hope it is still summer in Mokelumne Hill?

Irene & Michael

Tuesday, September 16 2008

Hello dear friends, this is the info Michael sent to Karan in India, it gives a nice explanation of our work

Karan --

Irene passed on your email to me. I will try to answer some of the points your raised and questions you asked.

We are working here in Brasília, the capital of Brazil, on a grant from the Rotary Club, trying to show poor people here how to substantially reduce their cost of fuel for cooking. (Brasília is in the center of Brazil, a long way from the Amazon forest. Some, but not as much, wood burning takes place.)

Unlike your people in Madhya Mandia, the people here generally use “bottled gas” for cooking, that is, propane or butane in a pressurized canister. The cost to refill a bottle of this gas is quite expensive, taking as much as one-third to one-half of a family's total income. While some of the results of burning wood vs. bottled gas are different, the economic results are pretty much the same.

Solar cookers work very well here, as I am sure they would where you are. (Irene almost always cooks rice and lentils - and “hardboiled” eggs and sometimes hot dogs - at every workshop she holds!)

But please be advised, Irene and I do not SELL solar cookers (or anything else). Our project is to TEACH people how to MAKE their own solar cookers (and other fuel saving and water purification devices) out of materials that are cheap (or free) around here, with tools and technology that are simple and appropriate.

It is true that a solar cooker can be as cheap as $2 or $3 (or even free) - but only if you make it yourself! Manufactured solar cookers start at about $15 and go up from there!

A big advantage here is that cardboard and aluminum - the materials needed for a solar cooker - are abundant and inexpensive, often free for the taking. Even if some of the materials have to be purchased, solar cookers made here by local people can be very cheap. Certainly cheap, if you consider that a solar cooker can save the cost of a bottle of gas (or a month’s worth of wood for burning) in a month or two! That is a huge return on investment.

You should also be aware that our program is not just promoting solar cooking: It’s a four part program. First are the solar cookers (a particularly simple and easily made version) that comes under the name “CooKit” produced by Solar Cookers International in Sacramento (near where we live in the United States). It is not covered by any patent or copywrite, and people are encouraged to copy it.

But what to you do when the sun is not shining? For this we teach people to make a “Rocket Stove.” This is a very efficient, simple stove made from readily available “junk” materials here with simple tools that can burn just about anything (including, I imagine, cow dung).

Food can be brought to cooking temperatures quite quickly with this kind of stove. Once cooking temperature has been reached, the Rocket Stove should be shut off (simply by covering the air intake) and the hot pot with the food still in it is placed in a “Hay Basket.” The Hay Basket is simply a large basket lined and stuffed with any insulating material (newspaper, old cloth, etc.). When placed in the Hay Basket, the food in the pot continues to cook!

Finally, we promote a very simple, reusable, very inexpensive devise called a “WaPI” that shows when a container of water has reached a temperature to kill virtually all the disease-causing bacteria in the water.

Since you use e-mail, I assume you have access to the Internet. We have a web page covering our work here at www.solarcookingplus.com which you may find useful. Also, you may find more information on solar cooking at www.solarcookers.com, and a very useful video on Rocket Stoves made of metal cans and containers by going to google video, “How to Build a Rocket Stove”. Rocket Stoves can also be built out of clay, tiles or bricks. There is considerable information on these on the Internet.

We are very busy here and do not have much time to spare, but I hope you find this helpful.

Good luck on what you are trying to do.

Mike Boylson

Big hugs to everyone

Irene & Mike

Tuesday, September 30 2008

Dear friends, all is well, we postponed our return for 2 weeks, just in order to finish all the loose ends, which are partnerships with local Rotary Clubs. This involves a lot of meetings, paperwork and organization.

By now the rains are starting , we still have one workshop programmed, but it will be the last one. Instead of the initially programmed 4 hands-on workshops we managed to have 11 of them.

Today we are going to make a DVD, a step by step visual instruction, which will enable our monitors to teach in a more effective way.

We have a team of 14 monitors, amongst them 8 rotarians.

Our home coming is forseen for October 14th. We leave Brasília the 13th and will, once more, skip our projected stop of a couple of days in Rio de Janeiro. After all this is not a vacation but a hard working trip!

I have to admit that we are happy at the perspective of being home in our own habitat! Hopefully we can rest a little after our return. We have over a thousand pictures and had no time to edit them for sending by email. Maybe we can start on the plane going home?

Big hug for everybody, looking forward to see you all and the nice Martini gatherings!

Irene

Thursday, October 30 2008

Here we are back home after eleven weeks of “Teaching the Teachers” in Brazil. It certainly was no vacation but a very hard working time!

Instead of the originally-planned 4 workshops we held 12, in addition to the 8 slide show presentations for different organizations reaching roughly 600 people who presently know about the method, which of course will not make them all avid solar cookers!

We have now 5 teams of “multiplicators” perfectly able to teach the use and making of the Solar Cookers, the Rocket Stoves and the Hay Baskets. We gave them all the information needed to adquire the local material to make the devices. For example we had the good luck to find adhesive aluminum foil, which made the manufacturing of Solar Cookers much quicker and easier than if we had to glue aluminum foil to the cardboard. It also makes the final product better finished and sturdier than the glued version.

On several occasions we had the opportunity to observe how well prepared our star students are to continue this important program. They made us very proud! Since they have no access to high-quality tools in Brazil (most are imported and thus far too expensive for modest incomes), Michael ordered 17 sets of aviation-style tin snips in the U.S.A. and had them sent to Brasília. Unfortunately, the first batch of tin snips arrived just after we left! They will be distributed by our partner Rotary Club.

I also made 11 visits to local Rotary Clubs, not only to have the necessary make-ups, but mostly in order to publicize our program and workshops. Governor Ronaldo Carneiro invited me to accompany him on several of his official visits. He wanted to make all the Rotary Clubs of his district aware of the existence of our Program. Of course I couldn't do all the visits, but Gov. Carneiro and his wife have been our very best PR persons.

Our workshops mostly took place in the far-away satelite townships around Brasília, where there is still a lot of poverty and lack of access to the most elementary facilities. (We also put more than 4,000 kilometers - about 2,500 miles - on our rented Fiat in getting to these places!)

We gave workshops for several very important and active environmental groups and university students, who were very interested in the water pasteurization part of the classes.

Prof. Bob Metcalf's Portable Microbiology Laboratory is now in the hands of Dr. Sonia Terra Ferraz, employee at the Ministry of Public Health and teacher at the University of Brasília. She has an impressive resumé. She is considering coming to the United States in order to meet Prof. Metcalf.

One Chilean lady, Ery Fredes, a local representative of Greenpeace, came to our workshop at the Planetary Union. After consulting her headquarters in São Paulo, they asked for a solar cooker package, which we gladly handed to her.

In order to assure the continuity of this program, we are in the process of establishing partnership with two Rotary Clubs in Brasília: one with RC Brasília Lago Norte for Matching Grants (they have already reserved US$ 3,000, - for the project), and another with RC Brasília Peninsula Norte for a Voluntary Service Grant (VSG). After we were done with the workshop, we stored the remaining program material at the facilities of the Cooperating Organization, Solidarity Program for Increasing Family Income, our partner for the Matching Grants with the RC Brasília Lago Norte. I hope any other RC of our own region will join us in this very important humanitarian program.

Even after we left Brasília, Governador Carneiro continues to give attention to the project and Mrs. Fernanda Curado, spouse of the President Elect of RC Peninsula Norte, and Cecilia Gabriel President of RC Samambaia are organizing more workshops. They have also gotten in touch with all our students in order to find out who is using the Solar Cooker on a daily basis.

All my gratitude for the Rotary Club of Jackson, of which I am a proud member, for all the support, financial as well as moral they gave me for this exploratory program. I also thank my fellow Rotarians in Brazil who helped us to spread the available money, indicating where to buy cheaper material and did not hesitate to become our partners in order to continue the good work. Also my heartfelt thank to our dear friends who provided us with lodging, food and encouragement.

And last, but not least, my husband Michael without whom I never could have done this. He was of great help, he is an excellent teacher and knew how to communicate with the students without speaking their language! He even designed an alternative model of Rocket Stove, entirely made of scrap material, easely available in Brazil. He is not a Rotarian, but certainly knows the meaning of “Service Above Self”

Irene Perbal