Ces jours derniers nous sommes allés installer un four solaire Lytefire 6 dans la communauté de Lougsi située à environ 30km de Ouagadougou.
Nous avons été très bien accueillis par la communauté des femmes de ce groupe et par les villageois.
Ce projet est soutenu par la fondation Primesteps Janssen et l’association SOS Energie et, pour ces femmes, la Lytefire va les aider à être indépendantes financièrement, elles pourront désormais contribuer dans la scolarisation de leurs enfants, contribuer à leurs soins et aux dépenses familiale.
Je me suis occupé de la partie installation et les bases de l’entreprenariat, avec l’aide de Tagnabou, et Philippe le boulanger de The Taste a géré la formation aavec le pain. Tous ensemble on a cuit plusieurs types de pains (sucré, au lait, au sésame, brioche, pain de mine, cake, biscuits, pastel, pain salé,...).
Les femmes ont hâte d’aller vendre leurs pains dans les marchés maintenant. Elles ont déjà mûri leur stratégie afin de conquérir les différents marchés. Avec Solar Fire l’indépendance financière des femmes est assurée !
We are proud to announce the start of our cooperation with the Swiss based Jansen PrimeSteps Foundation. With the support and advise of the PrimeSteps team we will equip and train entrepreneurs with Lytefire solar ovens across different locations in Burkina, with a focus on women’s groups and cooperatives.
Jansen PrimeSteps is a Swiss non-profit foundation supporting solutions to improve people’s quality of life. Across sectors and countries, they identify the best solutions and provide know-how and financial support to scale-up projects with a large impact potential. We are really excited and honored by their support!
This project allows us to target specifically small women groups, who are not involved in bigger institutions or supported by larger organizations. By empowering these groups with the Lytefire technology and with the skills to run their own solar business, they can create their own income, become more independent, reduce their use of fossil fuels, protect their health and improve their quality of life - with Lytefire and solar entrepreneurship. We look forward to update on the project’s progress.
Mission accomplie ! C’est en janvier 2021 que l’association normande Tora Coeur de Caux nous a contacté par l’intermédiaire de notre ami Loïc Perochon pour démarrer un projet à Sika, province de Nasséré, dans le nord du Burkina Faso. Après quelques échanges dynamiques avec Denise Fouquer, membre fondatrice de l’asso, et l’accord du maire de Nasséré, une campagne de levée de fonds a démarré pour permettre de compléter le financement du projet. Elle a été un franc succès et tous les contributeurs sont chaleureusement remerciés.
Du jeudi 14 octobre 2021 au samedi 23 octobre 2021, en tant que représentant de Solar Fire/GoSol au Burkina Faso j’ai organisé la formation de l’association Tora Cœur de Caux en boulangerie et en pâtisserie. Nous avons commencé par la formation technique de 4 personnes avec aussi Mr Eric René Sawadogo qui représente l’association Tora ici. Les premiers jours ont porté sur le montage de la Lytefire, la focalisation des miroirs, et la maintenance de la machine. Nous les avons appris pendant 5 jours à maîtriser plus que le nécessaire sur la Lytefire afin qu’elle puisse être installée une fois chez eux. Par ailleurs, les personnes formées pourraient même former d’autres bénéficiaires si elles le souhaitent.
A partir du 20 octobre 2021, nous avons débuté la formation en pâtisserie avec notre chef pâtissier. Après avoir mis l’accent sur les règles d’hygiène à suivre, il a pu faire en moyenne 3 recettes par jour pendant 4 jours. Les différentes recettes étaient entre autres : le pain simple salé, le pain au lait, les brioches, le pain de mine, les gâteaux cake, le pain sucré, le pain ghanéen, le pain au sésame, le pain hamburger…
Par ailleurs, le chef pâtissier les faisait reprendre les recettes eux-mêmes jusqu’à ce qu’ils les maîtrisent.
Ils étaient tous enthousiastes d’être les premiers à débuter pour la première fois de telles recettes dans leur village, me confient-ils.
Over the course of about 3 weeks, our team in Burkina Faso delivered and installed a Lytefire6 along with all the equipment needed for a small bakery, and we conducted two training modules, one focusing on small scale entrepreneurship skills, and the other on practical baking skills.
For the entrepreneurship training, we had said that we could handle a class size of about 15. Nearly 30 women showed up! Only a handful of them could read and write, but all of them wanted to learn more about how to handle money and improve their business skills. Of course, we could not turn them away. Fortunately, our entrepreneurship educator, Somé Alexis has extensive experience training women of all education levels, and he brought an additional helper who is fluent in Mooré, the language of the Mossi people.
While the ladies were learning how to do book keeping, budgeting and other entrepreneurship skills, we worked with some men from the village to ensure they had the know-how to install and calibrate the mirrors on the Lytefire. A number of young men came and went, but in our experience young men move around too much so even if they are trained up, they might not be around when they are needed. We worked with Mr. Sédou and André Nikiema (Vincent’s brother) to install and calibrate the mirrors of the Lytefire. This was also a great chance to see our country manager Martin Poubidjie in action, teaching others how to calibrate.
For the practical bakery portion of the training package, Mr. Jean Bosco made his appearance again and he and his son Allain spent a week with the ladies teaching them the fundamentals of baking, from good ingredient storage habits, to hygiene, proper measuring technique, how to vary the amount of yeast depending on temperature (when it’s 42degC in the afternoon, you don’t need as much yeast as in the morning!) and, very importantly, good kneading technique.
Their village is about 15 minutes off the road from Ouagadougou to Bobo Diolasso about 45 minutes from the city. There is an industrial bakery in the nearby town of Tanghin Dassouri that makes only (in my opinion) cardboard tasting baguettes, but there are so many other delicious varieties of bread and treats to make and the ladies have been very excited to learn some tastier recipes.
Based on our experiences with Remar, we have increased the surface area of the Lytefire from 5 square meters to 6 because the quality of sunlight in Burkina Faso is relatively low due to all the atmospheric dust blown off the Sahara. While you might not see a rain cloud for 9 months of the year, the skies always have a slight-to-severe white haze. For those of you who know your Direct Normal Irradiation levels, Ouagadougou and the surrounds receive about 1500w/m2 annually. For such a sunny country that isn’t very high and it’s due to the intense dustiness. Increasing the power of the Lytefire by 20% compensates for this.
As part of our package we also included a gas powered baking oven for those months of the year when there is simply too much dust (Harmattan wind season) and for the rainy season (July-August). The cost of LPG gas is very high for village life and so we’re very much looking forward to the accounting data the ladies have agreed to share with us.
Here, Lorin poses with some very happy new bakers:
Congratulations to the Goghin Women’s group and to SOS Burkina Énergie for sustainably going solar with Lytefire!
Tasteful smelling and freshly baked bread. Crispy on the outside, and fluffy on the inside - It’s so amazing that the baking heat was created by solar energy!
In our project in Ouagadougou with Remar we helped the women to build their own solar bakery to bake their own bread and create a stable income! - A highlight was also to see that all women no matter what health conditions, literacy level or number of children had the opportunity to participate in the training. Like that, they had the chance to learn the needed skills to run a small business.
Check out our video about the newly opened solar bakery in Burkina Faso.
As we continue to grow and to expand our work in new locations, and find new pathways to create impact, the development of solid teams in our field operations becomes more and more vital. We recently wrote about our ongoing work in Kenya, where our great team is introducing the Lytefire 5 oven to Kisumu through weekly solar baking demos.
Today, we would like to introduce to you our country managers from our key operational countries, and let them share some of their thoughts on the significance of our efforts.
Makenson Mérisca, Haiti
Makenson Merisca is joining us as a country manager for Haiti. He has long-term experience working with several different developmental foundations and programmes in Haiti especially in relation to child welfare and education. Makenson sees being a part of the SFCO team as a chance to work towards the preservation of our natural world, and his personal goal is to see Lytefire technology in widespread use in Haiti. He currently lives in Port-au-Prince with his wife and three children.
Makenson was recommended to us by the one and only Louino Robillard, a pillar of the community in Cité Soleil who Lorin met years ago while staying at and working alongside Haiti Communitere.
Makenson is a young family man with a variety of experience from heavy trucking to NGO support services. His family comes from a region of Haiti where there are some of the last forests in Haiti. Makenson wants to introduce Lytefire tech there because he says people often cut down their trees (sometimes even mango or avocado trees!) to sell to the bakery to burn to bake bread. There’s always a line up outside the bakery, so it seems like there’s a real chance to safeguard Haiti’s precious forests so that Maken’s kids can also enjoy them when they grow up.
Martin Pouabidjie, Burkina Faso
The project with Remar gave us the chance to start building a team here in Burkina Faso, and while we were cooking one day, Martin walked up and was already full of ideas. Full of confidence and not afraid to get his hands dirty, Martin has proven to a hard worker who is willing to learn. Our mutual goal is to deliver more and more trainings to associations and small groups who can use Burkina’s abundant sunshine to generate income while protecting the environment.
Martin is one of six children, and he has worked as a salesperson and coordinator-trainer in a family association, after which he has acquired work experience in team leadership, sales, and marketing. He has studied literature, sociology and project management, with the specific goal of being able to carry out projects of his own. Martin is a father to a four year-old daughter and in his free time he enjoys cinema and football.
For the past two weeks, Martin has been on the ground with the Women of Goghin overseeing the implementation of our entrepreneurship education and bakery training packages. As part of our follow-up with them, Martin will help them to develop and market their products so they can increase the earnings of their women’s cooperative.
Joan Arwa Ogwang, Kenya
Joan Arwa Ogwang is a Kenyan, with a (MA) from Maseno University. With more than 13 years of experience as a regional manager at Capital Airtime Limited (Kisumu), she is a three time winner of the Safaricom regional awards. She has also been a real estate manager for over 15 years, a part-time lecturer at Maseno University’s communication department, as well as a successful entrepreneur with 10 years of experience.
Joan’s motivation is to positively change lives by helping people generate money to be able to afford a decent life. Her personal view is that Solar Fire machines are remarkable since everyone who experiences them are in disbelief of the amount of heat solar light can generate, and that fuels her motivation. With our local technician, Jared Omondi, they are promoting the solar oven through local population.
We’re very happy to announce the success of our collaboration with the NGO Remar in Burkina Faso. We have officially opened of a brand new, Lytefire powered bakery in Burkina Faso after some weeks of training with the ladies of Remar.
At the request of Remar, an NGO operating in 70+ countries, we worked with their local welding staff to build a Lytefire5 with baking oven, a bakery building, and conducted entrepreneurship and bakery skills training. Remar is taking care of 150 vulnerable peoples on the edge of Burkina Faso’s capital city of Ouagadougou and they are looking for every advantage possible. For one thing, buying bread from the outside costs a considerable amount of precious cash. Thanks to funding from Remar Espana & Remar Schweiz we were able to train Remar welders to build the Lytefire 5, build a new building to house the bakery, buy the equipment and train the ladies of Remar for success in their baking initiative.
This project had the added spice of starting before the WHO declared a global pandemic. In fact, just after finishing the training of the fabricators and the production of the first Lytefire5, project manager Lorin Symington was in the Philippines to follow up on our projects there and meet with the University of Eastern Visayas and the Philippines Coconut Authority to explore the possible avenues for solar thermal to contribute to adding value in the coconut value chain. Lorin left the Philippines just as PH instituted a very early and very strict lockdown. By the time he got the Burkina the world was in a panic and isolation was advised.
Flash forward a few months and Remar/GoSol projects are planned for Haiti, Niger and Mali. During the first months of lockdown Remar and GoSol managed to secure additional funding to ensure exceptional results of the project in Burkina including enough to warrant building a brick and mortar bakery, buy a mixing machine and build a team of local professionals capable of ensuring appropriate training for the women of Remar and ongoing support.
The bakery was officially launched in October and we are happy to report that they are producing +100kg of bread per week as well as 5kg of ‘Madeleine’ personal sized cakes for sale in the city. They’re saving a bundle and making an income on top. The women report being more confident after receiving training because they now have the vocabulary and skills to run a business and earn money to contribute back to Remar, which, as an organization, has done so much for so many of them.
For us, it was truly inspiring to see these ladies, many of whom have not been in school for many years, pick up their pen and paper and calculate profit and loss scenarios while their babies hang on their hips. At first, it was hard to tell which baby belonged to who, because all the babies were being passed around so much. At first, the toddlers were not in class, but once the classroom segment was done and it was time to bake, there were kids constantly underfoot. We had a class full of 15 women, some as young as 15, others 50 years of age, and they cooperated to ensure that everyone, regardless of health condition, literacy level or number of children, had the chance to participate in the training and learn the needed skills to run a small business.
With our aspiring GoSol team in place in Burkina Faso, we are continuing to provide support to this fledgeling business, the success of which gives hope for widespread adoption of direct solar thermal energy systems and an end to deforestation in the Sahel.
