By Yumiko Yamada, Kopernik Fellow

About a month ago, I blogged about baseline survey for Kopernik's smarter cooking project in India, which distributes Greenway Smart Cookstoves. Since then I've been in Delhi conducting other assignments, but I headed to the field again to conduct the follow up survey portion of the rapid impact assessment with the same beneficiaries I've interviewed before.

The scenery of Jhansi train station

One day in late July, I took a train from Delhi to Jhansi, where the nearest train station to the headquarter of the partner NGO Haritika is located. Due to the widespread black out that happened throughout in Northern India, the train was delayed for two hours and it took me a total of over 6 hours to arrive at the station. From Jhansi station, the Haritika staff picked me up and it took another 3 hours by car to reach their office, where I stayed during the survey period with NGO staff.

The next day, I visited Khakri veerpura, one of the villages where Haritika distributed the cookstoves. I went there by motorbike with a Haritika staff. Due to the heavy rain around the area several days ago, the road to the village was cut off by a huge puddle of water, which I had to cross by walking.

There is no proper road to the village

Children in Kharki veerpura village

I asked villagers for their opinions on topics such as the usefulness of the cookstove, the frequency of use, and the changes (if any) on their cooking habits and fuel consumption since acquiring the cookstove. I will describe the detailed impact of the cookstove in another blog post.

Bhagwati, a 70-year-old woman who lives in Khakri veerpura, told me that she uses the cookstove about once a day. She especially feels that with the Greenway Smart Stove she can make tea quicker than with chulha cookstoves. 

Bhagwati (left) and her grandchildren

Another woman, Amita, who is 25 years old and a mother of 3 children, told me that she likes the Greenway Smart Stove because it emits less smoke than chulha. 

Amita and her children and neighbors

Overall, the response of beneficiaries toward the cookstove was good. Some households found it difficult to change their habits of using chulhas (many of them still use it in conjunction with the new stove), but most families now use the Greenway Smart Stove regularly. People value the cookstove because it requires less firewood and produces noticeably less smoke. In the next post, I will write about another survey conducted in Chandanpura village.