Site Visit From The Gold Standard

Yesterday we were honoured to host our colleagues from the The Gold Standard, one of the leading standards and registries in the voluntary carbon market. CEO Margaret Kim, Director of Marketing and Communications Jamie Balantyne, and Senior Manager and Strategy Yuval Tchetchik, joined us for a full day of excitement as we visited three different schools around Kibiri.

We started the day at Simoshi’s office, where Rehema Nakyazze also joined us to talk about Uganda Stove Manufacturer Limited, the provider of our institutional improved cook stoves (IICS). We then went to a secondary school using the traditional 3-stone fires in their kitchen, before we moved to Springfields International, a private primary school that had joined our Project Activity back in May this year and are currently using the IICS. We continued to another school, this time Kibiri Catholic Primary, a government aided school that has been using our IICS since 2019.

This was an amazing experience for our visitors, as they witnessed first hand the challenges encountered when using traditional cooking practices, and the incredible positive impact that is palpable straight away when seeing the cooks in action. They were especially shocked by the improvement in air quality. They also had the chance to hear from the Head Teachers on how the firewood savings had positively impacted the school finances.