Our mission is to inspire and empower youth and women to realize their full potential and engage as active citizens to promote good governance and democracy in their communities.
Working in rural villages of Cameroon, we've noticed that most of the women use firewood for cooking; furthermore, many houses have just one room that serves as a kitchen as well as a bedroom. As a consequence, these people are highly exposed to the smoke from the firewood. To address indoor air pollution, RIDEV works with Peace Corps Volunteers and trains them on how to make simple improved cook stoves. In addition to this, we organize sensitization campaigns on the benefits of improved cook stoves.
Our work in the field of indoor air pollution and health draws on the principles and strategies of Behavior Change Communication(BCC). So far, RIDEV has trained more than 30 Peace Corps volunteers and 50 community leaders in 5 villages.
Contact Information
Our Focus
Since 2011, RIDEV is working in 5 villages (around 18,000 people) of the west region of Cameroon to promote the use of improved cook stoves. Our main target are women in rural areas. Most of them have a very low economic status and almost 90% of this population lives on less than $1US/day. Their main occupation is farming.
We've conducted interviews with 200 women and only 20% of this group have heard about improved cook stoves. Almost 100% of the group complains about the bad effects of smoke from firewood. Our main goal for this intervention is to design an effective behavior change campaign that will help to reduce indoor air pollution.
Our Experience And Interest In The Four PCIA Central Focus Areas
Understanding the social and cultural barriers that will prevent the target audience from improving the indoor air quality is key to our work. The foundation of our work is the design for behavior change(BEHAVE model) developed by AED. Based on formative research conducted in the target communities, we select the behavior to promote, identify priority and influencing groups, and identify the determinants(reasons why the target group would either do the behavior or not). From this info, we select the appropriate activities to be carried out which ranges from demonstration to improving the access, etc. Firewood is a key aspect of the community life in many villages of Cameroon.
Once we get the results of the study we're conducting to identify the social and cultural barriers around indoor air quality, it is obvious that we'll need to improve access to improved cook stoves in Cameroon. So far, we've collaborated with Peace Corps Volunteers as well as other NGOs in Cameroon to encourage people to use improved cook stoves. We anticipate that we'll need to develop a strong market strategy very soon.
We are interested in having more information on technology standardization. In Cameroon, most of the improved cook stoves that are available are the portable ones. Very few people think to use a chimney.
RIDEV has started a collaboration with Dr. Zohir Chowdhury of the State University of San Diego-USA to become more familiar on how to monitor air pollution. Currently, Dr Chowdhury is carrying out a study on air quality in Cameroon. We're planning to use the results of this study to launch a national awareness campaign. Also, monitoring the indoor air pollution exposure and consequence on health would be very useful both to raise awareness and promote improved cook stoves.
Relevant Publications or Studies
None noted
Our Contribution to the Partnership
RIDEV will be more than happy to share the results of our work with the members of the network. We are as well eager to learn from other members who have a longer experience in this field. We're just starting to work on air pollution and we need to build our capacity; any capacity building opportunity is more than welcome.
