Healthy and Safe Kitchens

Our Kitchens staff teaches villages how to build fuel-efficient and sanitary kitchens in order to help communities lift themselves out of unsafe living conditions.

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Kibo Kitchens protect families — especially women and children — from smoke inhalation, burns, and other dangers caused by open flames. We teach communities to build stoves that use less firewood, produce less smoke, and are made from freely accessible materials.

Women are often responsible for 90 percent of the work in the home, which includes cooking, caring for children and husbands, looking for firewood, fetching water, nursing the sick, working in the gardens, and cleaning the home.

Kibo stoves require only 1/9 of the wood compared to traditional three-stone, open cooking fires, which means women spend less time looking for firewood and preparing meals. Babies and toddlers who are in the kitchen with their mothers are less likely to suffer from lung diseases, eye infections, burns, and other issues caused by open flames.

Cleaner, safer kitchens mean that men are more likely to help with domestic duties and spend time in the kitchen with their wives, which strengthens the family unit.

Kibo Kitchens also reduce the risk of rape and domestic violence. Women are often attacked when they are searching for firewood alone, and the scarcity of firewood means that men will often attack women whom they catch taking wood from their property.

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