Today’s situation
Every day, women carry bundles of wood from the Namib Desert on their heads to their huts in the DRC and Mondesa townships of the coastal town of Swakopmund. Korinna, initiator of the project on site, has been talking to the women, see video below: many women and children walk up to 30 km 2 to 3 times a week to collect wood for themselves to try and serve one warm meal to their families a day.
How is this possible?
Namibia has an unemployment rate of 34%. Accordingly, a large part of the population lives in poverty, without access to running water and electricity. This means that wood is usually the only source of energy available. However, Namibia is largely a desert. This makes wood a rare and expensive energy resource. Wood, as collected by the women of the Swakopmund townships from the nearby Namib Desert and the dry river, the so-called Swakop, has a poor burning quality and is therefore not suitable for making a fire to cook food on. This makes it difficult for families to prepare hot meals and eat a healthy diet on an everyday basis.
In this video, a young woman explains how she gets firewood for cooking (with subtitles from second 21).
How can the situation be improved?
The situation the women are in, has not left Korinna untouched and in her head she turned it over and over while contemplating ideas: how can the situation be improved? After an intensive search for a solution, she discovered the following: simple stoves made of sheet metal and charcoal briquettes!
The charcoal, in turn, is obtained from wood derived from regular clearing of pastureland in Namibia
These pressed charcoal briquettes burn for about 3 hours, enough time to cook a meal for a family. They are pressed in northern Namibia from leftover material from charcoal production, which is too small and fine for regular charcoal production. The production of charcoal provides work and at the same time serves to combat scrub encroachment on grazing land. The briquettes are purely natural and contain no chemically added substances. They are light and easy to transport. They come at a low cost.
In this video, a young woman explains how to cook efficiently with the briquettes (subtitles from approx. second 14).
How do we provide support?
200 euros will ensure to provide a family with a stove and enough discounted briquettes to cook food for one year on every day of that year.
Eur 200 for a year means 55 Eur-cents a day, which is estimated to be 1/5 the cost of an Espresso in Munich!
Donate to support one or more families. ALL donated amounts are welcome!
Or give continuous support to one family by setting up a standing order of, for example Eur 20 per month. This monthly amount would also be used to bridge disasters such as floods or extremely cold and wet winters (clammy clothes, wet shoes, clammy bedding, etc.).
The project is meant to start as a pilot with a small number of families to support and is envisaged to expand depending on the donations received. Project coordinator Korinna provides and distributes the stoves and briquettes to the women on site.
Your donation
The German-Namibian Society (Deutsch-Namibische Gesellschaft e.V. – DNG) is a registered voluntary, non-profit, non-partisan and private association. It currently has around 1500 members and supporters. It supports projects in Namibia, promotes youth and cultural exchange, publishes information, organizes seminars and conferences and does much more. In this way, it fosters and promotes relations between Germany and Namibia in a wide variety of areas. Thus the DNG is also supporting and supervising this new project.
Donations for Cooking in Namibia can be transferred to the following DNG accounts:
Germany (German or European donations)
Kontoinhaber/Accout holder: Deutsch-Namibische Gesellschaft e.V.
Verwendungszweck/Purpose (important!!): Cooking in Namibia
Commerzbank
IBAN: DE48 3008 0000 0211 3508 00
BIC: DRESDEFF300
Namibia (Namibian, South African and African donations)
Account holder / account name: COOKING IN NAMIBIA
Purpose / intended use: Cooking in Namibia
Bank name: First National Bank of Namibia
Account number: 64283916153
Branch code: 280472
Branch name: Swakopmund
Swift code: FIRNNANX
Important: please state the keyword Cooking in Namibia, otherwise your donation cannot be allocated to this project!
Note on tax return in Germany: the DNG will continue to issue donation receipts for donations of EUR 301 or more if the donor’s address is known. In this case, please contact the DNG at buero@dngev.de.
For donations of up to EUR 300 the German tax authorities generally recognize the bank statement or the deposit slip as proof for the tax return. For this reason, DNG does not issue donation receipts for donations of this amount. This saves costs in the interests of the DNG as a non-profit organisation.
If you have made such a donation, simply print out the form for submission to the tax office and submit it together with the payment receipt to your local tax office.
More information and contact
If you have any questions, you can contact the coordinators of the project in Germany, Hilma and Christoph, and the coordinator of the project in Swakopmund, Korinna at the following e-mail address: cooking-in-namibia@vgronau.de, or write to us using the contact form.
We will update this website regularly and keep you informed about the first steps and further progress of the project. If you want to be kept up to date with the latest news, subscribe to our newsletter.