When we include a new school under our Project Activity, it means we will be supporting the school for the long run. We enter into an agreement whereby we commit to handhold the school for a 10-year period throughout their cooking transition.
This means we are continuously training all the cooks, at least every other month, to ensure they feel comfortable with the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS), that they follow the guidelines to take the best care and approach for health and safety on both the IICS and the kitchen environment, and to inspect the IICS condition, so a free maintenance exercise can be booked in advance for when the schools go into the holiday period.
Changing behaviours takes a lot of effort and patience. Changing attitudes do not happen from one day to another. Sometimes, our hearts are broken when the new school term starts and we see some cooks no longer employed, new faces around, whch means we have to start all over again. It is so sad to see some cooks go, because we become good friends from our continuous school visits.
Nevertheless, some of the school kitchens we have been monitoring since 2016 still have the same cooks employed preparing the daily meals. That is such a relief for us, because we know the IICS are in very good hands! We wanted to share the training sheets from one such school, in Gangu Muslim Primary School, were we still find today Adi Bosco and Sofia Ndagire, just as we did when we first installed the IICS back in March 2016 when we taught them how to move away from their 3-stone fires.
This is such an achievement to know not only how the schools continue to use the IICS without going back to traditional cooking practices, but also we support those individuals who operate the IICS throughout a long period of time, because modifying behaviour is a process, not a single event. And this eductation that happens in the kitchen is also transferred back home.
