Radha’s Message for September 2015
Dear Friends,
I am just returning from a series of major meetings, events, and activities in New York, marking the end of what has been a momentous month for the Alliance and for the clean cookstoves and fuels sector.
In addition to recognition by the Clinton Global Initiative of the momentum in the cookstoves sector and further integration of clean cooking into the Sustainable Energy For All agenda, the new Sustainable Development Goals launched this week include our issue of clean cooking directly within Global Goal 7, the clean energy goal, and indirectly under multiple other goals. I applaud the many Alliance partners who have worked tirelessly to ensure inclusiveness of the process of development of the SDGs, their targets and indicators. Though it has been a long process, these goals are necessary to end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and fix climate change, and they bring focus to those interventions that can help achieve this ambitious new development agenda. As you can imagine there were dozens of meetings this past week in New York, and the promise of cleaner, more efficient cookstoves, as well as of the Alliance’s model of engagement as the means of achieving many of these goals, came up time and again.
With close to 30 million cleaner and more efficient cookstoves and fuels distributed since the Alliance’s founding in 2010, we have shown that the market continues to grow, enterprises are starting to produce at large scale, new companies are entering the market, and there are stronger partnerships with local NGOs and CSOs to provide customer insight, support distribution, awareness generation and adoption. The timing could not be better as the Alliance celebrates its fifth anniversary this month.
By now, you have hopefully seen our new report, “Five Years of Impact”. The report highlights many of the Alliance’s major achievements and features key statistics, lessons learned, stories of impact, testimonials from donors and stakeholders, as well as a look ahead at what’s in store for the next five years. If you haven’t yet, I encourage you to take a look and share it with others who may be interested in learning more.
Thank you again for your continuing efforts and partnership to help us get to where we are today. We are now poised to go to scale and have clearly shown that clean cooking can not only support achievement of multiple Global Goals but can successfully ensure the poor contribute to and benefit from sustainable development.
Regards,
Radha
@Radha_Muthiah