First, a little background...
The last few weeks have been very eye-opening, learning about a
serious problem I knew very little about. As I've recently learned, "indoor air pollution" (usually fumes from cooking and heating) is responsible for
more than 2 million deaths annually and represents 3% of the global burden of
disease (in the top 10), a shock to me. Our partner, the GACC, is
a public-private initiative to save lives, improve livelihoods, empower
women, and combat climate change by creating a global market for
cleaner indoor heating and cooking solutions. The Alliance is hosted
by the UN Foundation and supported by the various foundations, NGO's, and National Governments (press releases here and here).In a nutshell, the project is a series of market feasibility studies across 4 strategically-relevant nations (Nigeria, Brazil, China, and South Africa) -- and includes understanding national demographics, cooking habits, cultural factors, income levels, pollution exposure, etc and putting that information together to create clear product/market strategies for each nation. Much of this information will come from interviews with in-country commercial & NGO partners and field visits to target areas, as well as from visits we will be doing in the UK & the Netherlands at partner HQs. Field visits should be the most interesting, putting us in the homes of some of the most remote villages in rural areas of these countries attempting to properly frame both the problem and the solution.
The team is small and I'll be spending roughly 4-5 weeks in each of our target countries. I've finally gotten enough visas and immunizations to get started and am off to London tomorrow morning to kick the project off. Next stop they say is China, but much is still up in the air...
Over the course of my trip I'll do my best to keep posting and capture what I see!
/eh