We are always proud to tell our audience, since we first sold the institutional improved cook stove (IICS) back in March 2016 to Bright Angels Primary School in Kampala, we are still repairing every year all of their 3 IICS for free, that is why today the school is achieving the same firewood savings they did as when we first deployed them. And this is the story for every single school that has joined Simoshi.
Despite the 15-month lockdown measures due to the pandemic, and the closure of schools, we have still managed to keep the pace with all the monitoring requirements for our carbon financing project activity. This meant we have collected many indicators from all 82 participating schools - including firewood expenditures, quality of air in the kitchen environment, status of the IICS and maintenance needs, repairing of IICS, training of all kitchen staff, number of jobs created - just to name a few.
Two monitoring periods were closed, audited by the United Nations Designated Operational Entity, with successful carbon credit issuances in November 2019 and March 2020. We are currently working on the third verification, and expect an issuance during the first quarter of 2022.
Under such challenging times, we can only be grateful to all the school staff and our donors who had supported our activities without hesitation. We share a short snapshot of where we are standing today and the impact made on the ground.