Nyirabagande Beatrice, married with six children, resides in Nyagatare District, Rwimiyaga Sector, Kabeza Cell, Rucyiri I Village. Nyirabagande, who has been using traditional three-stone fires all her life, has used an improved cookstove from the AREECA project for a year.
For Nyirabagande, using an improved cookstove helps her save time, effort, money, and possible bodily harm, especially eyes that smoke could affect. “Stoves improve quality of life by reducing exposure to smoke. As a result, lives are saved, deforestation is slowed down as stoves consume very little firewood, and greenhouse gas emissions are significantly reduced”, she stated. She added that she can now invest more time in income-generating activities instead of wasting most of his time collecting firewood.
Nyirabagande insisted on the reduced firewood by saying that one firewood used in the morning to heat the stove works the whole day.
In 2022 and 2023, 1000 community members in Rwimiyaga sector of Nyagatare District and Nyamugari Sector of Kirehe District were experiencing improved cookstoves donated bythe Alliance for Restoration of Forest Landscapes and Ecosystems in Africa (AREECA).
AREECA aims to increase large-scale Forest and Landscape Restoration's socio-economic, ecological, and climate-related benefits in Cameroon, Kenya, Malawi, and Rwanda.
In 2023, the AREECA project extended its interventions inthe Rwimiyaga and Karama sectors of the Nyagataredistrictand the Nyamugari, Mpanga, Nasho, Nyarubuye, and Kigaramasectors of the Kirehe district in Eastern Province.
RWARRI's responsibilities fell in the community mobilization activities, including the project awareness raising and capacity building of the local leaders and the community members to gain participation, adoption, and ownership of the project interventions' sustainability.