Clean Currents will partner with Solar Cookers International to purchase and distribute the solar cookers, which will address the locals’ basic needs in boiling water and cooking food.

Residents in the mid-Atlantic region who will purchase wind power off the grid can send solar cooking kits to locals in Haiti as Christmas gifts through Clean Current’s annual holiday giving campaign.

Clean Currents will donate a portion of proceeds from every residential wind power enrollment to the purchase and distribution of solar cookers in Port-Au-Prince beginning November 23 until January 12, 2011.

Only 12 percent of Haiti’s population had safe drinking water before the magnitude 7.0 earthquake, according to the Pan American Health Organization, and the lack of a clean water supply was even worsened by the disaster. This led to the outbreak of cholera and other diseases in Port-Au-Prince and relief camps.

Clean Currents will partner with Solar Cookers International to purchase and distribute the solar cookers, which will address the locals’ basic needs in boiling water and cooking food.

Solar Cookers hopes to educate Haitians on the long-term benefits of cooking using solar energy. Prior to the January 2010 earthquake, Haiti has suffered from extreme deforestation because most of its trees were cut down to make charcoal for cooking. In fact, the country already lost more than 80 percent of its original forest cover, the United Nations Development Programme estimated.

"Solar cookers are cheap, simple, and easy to maintain. By harnessing the abundant power of the sun, solar cookers provide a measure of independence to those who use them – and they decrease a user's reliance upon traditional sources of cooking fuel like charcoal, which is costly and very polluting," said Gary Skulnik, president of Clean Currents.

Solar cookers work by reflecting and concentrating the sun’s rays onto a black cooking pot, insulated by a clear plastic bag that traps the heat.

There are three basic types of solar cookers – box cookers, which cook at moderate to high temperatures and can accommodate multiple pots; curved concentrator cookers, which cook at high temperatures, making them ideal for large-scale cooking; and panel cookers, which incorporate elements of box and parabolic cookers, making them simple and relatively inexpensive to buy or produce.

Haitians will receive panel solar cookers from Solar Cookers International and Clean Currents.

To date, Solar Cookers distributed at least 400 solar cooking kits to displaced families in Pigeon, Haiti. One hundred thirty-five people were also taught proper use and care of the solar cooking equipment.

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