Applied Geography formerly Rural Training Center, Thailand

2007 Dec 07 Make a Low-Cost Emergency Solar Cooker

Dec 07, 2007

When a disaster strikes, it is too late for emergency preparedness. Thailand faces diverse environmental challenges (e.g. tsunamis, floods, droughts, deforestation, rising fuel costs, poverty, etc.). Many impoverished people feel powerless in the face of these challenges. Many are so overwhelmed, they desperately hope for outside help.

The Rural Training Center-Thailand (RTC-TH) believes in self-sufficiency and sustainability as the key to improving the lives and well-being of rural people and communities. Toward that end, the RTC-TH community-based environmental education programs strive to empower people to act locally, using available resources combined with low-tech / no-tech methods that fit with the local economy. Education empowers people to understand, use and adapt the lessons to best fit their individual comfort levels and conditions.

The use of solar cooking can help impoverished rural families to reduce spending money for cooking fuels, reduce air pollution, reduce wood cutting / collecting and deforestation, reduce pot scrubbing, and many other daily tasks. While not all traditional Thai food can be cooked using this simple solar cooker, whatever cooking you do is another step toward self-sufficiency and sustainability.

There are numerous models available for sale, and free plans abound to make your own. But many units for sale are beyond the reach of poor Thai farmers. But, we found a low-cost, low-tech/no-tech solar cooker that makes it easy for just about everyone to have an emergency solar cooker. The plans and description are posted in the "Our PDFs" section of the website.

We hope to include a solar cooking lesson in our REEEPP project. We encourage you to make a solar cooker and to begin experimenting to see what dishes you can cook this way. At the end of the PDF document are some handy web sites for other solar cookers.

If you would like to help our effort and volunteer to translate this newsletter article and the PDF article on making the low cost solar cooker, please e-mail us rtc2k5@gmail.com

Photo: with permission from www.solarcookers.org

Update: Kathy's Solar Cooker article has been translated to Thai by Khun Phat Kulphaichitra ?– HS1WFK hs1wfk@msn.com It is available in the PDF section of this website.