The fuel that the stoves require is flexible, either grass or wood will do, which meant that women could cook without having to take long, exhausting trips into the forest to harvest wood.

And so the Peko Pe cooking stove was born.

These stoves make it easier to collect fuel and they are less polluting as well, so women can run a cleaner, healthier kitchen without having to expose themselves or their children to deadly smoke. They are more fuel efficient and reduce the need to produce charcoal, an environmentally destructive practice that is a major cause of deforestation across Africa. These Peko Pe stoves are quite literally a breath of fresh air and they help keep the forest standing.

Peko Pe stoves help families and forests. That’s why WeForest is empowering rural families in Zambia to start using them. So far we’ve helped 192 families.