Sector Directory

Organization

ActionAid Association (India)

Mission

To work with poor and excluded people to eradicate poverty and injustice.

Organizational Expertise

Capacity Building, Climate/Environment, Gender / Womens Empowerment, Humanitarian/Emergency Response, Livelihoods, Microfinance, Monitoring and Evaluation, Policy Development, Research

Technologies & Fuels

Solar

Clean Cooking Activities

ActionAid India distributed improved cookstoves to 2,000 rural families who were affected by the super cyclone 1999 in Erasama and Balikuda blocks of Jagatsinghpur district, Odisha. This was one of the interventions of super cyclone reconstruction project of ActionAid. During the entire duration of the six-year project, this particular intervention of distributing cookstoves lasted three months. ActionAid collaborated with Odisha Renewable Energy Development Agency-OREDA (a state government undertaking) to distribute improved cookstoves that were designed and developed by OREDA. Salient features of this improved cookstove included less consumption of wood. which leads to fuel efficiency, conservation and reduction in deforestation, low emissions, and less smoke, leading to reductions in health hazards and cooking times with more generated heat, as well as more hygienic food being cooked. These stoves were portable, and women were using it any place that was suitable for them. ActionAid implemented this project through community-based organisations, particularly women’s groups. The beneficiaries were Dalits, Bengali refugees and Other Backward Castes (OBCs). Impacts of the project were captured through documentation of case studies, focus group discussions, and interviews with key stakeholders.

Partnership

Given the global food, agrarian and climate crisis, ActionAid ensures that our interventions in sustainable agriculture embraces technologies that are eco-friendly and appropriate to geo-climatic conditions. And in humanitarian situations, particularly floods in India, whole communities are not only cut off from everything they need to survive and sustain their livelihood, their access to resources like fuel and fodder are also completely compromised. Moreover, along with lives lost, belongings too are lost. Food provided during emergencies by donors have to be cooked but essential items like cookstoves and fuel are seldom provided. As a result, women and children endanger their safety and health, to fetch firewood in order to cook food over smoky, polluting open fires. Women walk for hours to find firewood and return home carrying heavy loads.

This ecofriendly initiative for Clean Cookstoves by the Global Alliance is a very crucial intervention and ActionAid, which works with the most marginalized social groups living in poverty, particularly those who are recovering from emergencies, will benefit.

Regions Operating In

South Asia

Country Based In

India

Address

ActionAid, R-7
Hauz Khas Enclave, New Delhi - 110016
New Delhi, 110016

Primary Point of Contact

Name: Mr. James Pochury

Title: Programme Officer, Institutional Partnership Development Unit (IPD)

Email: james.pochury@actionaid.org

Phone: +91-9654352135

Secondary Point of Contact

Name: Mr. Prem Ranjan

Title: Programme Manager, Institutional Partnership Development (IPD)

Email: prem.ranjan@actionaid.org

Phone: +91-11-40640559