The mission of Development Technical Assistance Services is to contribute to excellence of service delivery by the various partners involved in household energy and health programs. This mission is realised through two key goals a)To build the capacities of organisations involved in implementation of programmes. Areas of intervention: –Advocacy work on biomass energy conservation –Providing training in biomass energy technologies and techniques to improve efficiency of biomass energy use as well as reducing human exposure to smoke and other pollutants. –Designing dissemination approaches and providing training for field workers in participatory extension methodologies that aim at achieving genuine participation of communities.
b)To conduct research in the fields of biomass energy conservation and indoor air pollution
Key interventions: –Studies to quantify biomass energy use by households before and after adopting specific technologies such as improved stoves. –Measuring concentration of smoke in the kitchen before and after households adopt technologies and techniques aimed at reducing pollution.
Contact Information
For Malawi Development Technical Assistance Services is offering the following key activities for our clients: We conduct quantitative studies on smoke concentration in the kitchen as well as measuring the consumption of biomass fuels by households. We have developed participatory concept modules for dissemination of biomass energy conservation technologies and techniques. We offer training on biomass energy conservation technologies and techniques and dissemination approaches. The ultimate beneficiaries are low income households in both rural and urban areas.
Our Experience And Interest In The Four PCIA Central Focus Areas
Realising that there are few actors in the biomass sector, we have been promoting a mainstreaming approach to ensure that biomass energy conservation is implemented by those in other sectors. This calls for partnerships. The main challenge has been to synchronise different approaches particularly a commercial approach for dissemination of biomass energy versus relief interventions. Furthermore, there are certain communities that use big fires to dry their maize crop in the kitchen. Such communities have found it difficult to adopt the stoves which often have a small fire.
The interest of Development Technical Assistance Services in marketing has been to contribute to the development of an appropriate social marketing concept for promotion of low cost stoves targetting low income communities. This is a challenging area particularly if mass marketing of the stoves has to be realised. We conducted initial studies for ProBEC Malawi to assess the effectiveness of the social marketing concept in Malawi.
Our contribution in this area has been to assess the efficiency of the stoves and other technologies by measuring the savings made in biomass fuel consumption by using the technologies.
We have developed both quantitative and participatory monitoring tools for measuring the effectiveness of the programes. The participatory tools focus on measuring processes, and impact of the interventions.
Relevant Publications or Studies
Not yet
Our Contribution to the Partnership
Development Technical Assistance Services has been innovative in developing tools particularly in the area of participation by the communities. We will be more than willing to share our tools and experiences with other partners. In addition we would like to work in partnership with others to conduct research and development of concepts for implementation of biomass energy conservation, indoor air pollution control initiatives.
