Heart to Hearth: Darfur Stoves Project’s Andree Sosler Makes Survival Sustainable

January 10, 2012

Call it the bright side of globalization: progressive solutions midwifed by transnational interconnections. From her office in Berkeley, Calif., Andree Sosler, executive director of the Darfur Stoves Project, coordinates the distribution of cheap, clean, super fuel-efficient cooking stoves to women in the Darfur region of Sudan. Designed by Berkeley scientists, partially manufactured in Mumbai, India, and assembled in Sudan, the stoves vastly reduce the amount of time and money Sudanese women have to spend obtaining firewood and cooking food.

Dubbed "the five minute stove" by a group of Darfuri women Sosler helped train to market the device, the stoves are carefully calibrated to fit local environmental conditions and traditional cooking methods.