I then contacted my suppliers here and they talked to their competitors and managed together to find another 280 skins so I used some of the funding to collect these and Fletcher’s again shipped them across. They are currently being distributed by Volunteering Vanuatu to a slum settlement in Port Vila called Black Sands (where 95% of the houses were destroyed, see pictures in the previous post) and Takara and Paonangisu villages in North Efate. I’m hoping to get some photos of them in action soon. The remainder is going to be used by the Society Agricole to assist chicken farmers get their businesses back up and running.
We have been making progress on the stove/oven project as well. I have been working with an engineer friend of mine to redesign it to make it easier to assemble, ideally, with little or no welding.
The plan is we will have them laser cut in NZ complete with folding and alignment marks and ship as a flat pack for assembly by locals. NZ Steel have finally come through with a donation of enough steel to make the first 50 units, we should pick this up in the next few weeks. I have also been working on a design for a low cost folder which I’m hoping to build in soon.
We have been talking with Economic Development Division of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community and they are keen to work with us on this in Vanuatu, Kiribati, and the Marshalls as part of their Cooking for Life program. Talks have stalled as the cyclone hit all of those areas just as we started working on the details.