For this lodge, necessity is not only the mother of invention but also sire to sustainable building practices that leverage the skills and know how of the local community in such a highly creative, extraordinarily functional fashion that one can appreciate its craftsmanship and beauty independent of its extremely responsible bloodline. Over the course of 80 years as a working farm in Africa, structures at Gibb’s Farm have had to endure hard wear from daily use and formidable weather conditions. When time comes for replacement or renovation, virtually all building materials are salvaged and reused, including cement, roofing sheets and timber.

Gibb’s Farm has been known to have saved the smallest metal scraps - nails pulled from timber are melted down and repurposed into spectacularly crafted decorative hardware - you’d never know the pretty bathroom hook and window locks had rich former lives as lug nuts and bedsprings. New guest cottages are built with local labor from almost entirely local + salvaged material. Of the minimal new materials brought to Gibbs, significant vigilance goes in to assuring they come from responsible sources. Cottage walls are 50% glass, offering generous doses of natural light. Almost all furniture is made on site using local materials and labor in workshops on farm property.

The behind the scenes at Gibbs is teeming with activity… we toured the barnyard, said hello to the pigs and cows while inspecting the large scale composting operation that naturally fertilizes the farm’s 10 acres of organic crops. We then perused the storage facilities where seemingly EVERYTHING that was ever brought to the property has been salvaged and carefully stored and categorized for future use.

After visiting the furniture building workshop, we spotted their great big sun farm: Gibb’s has recently installed one of Tanzania’s largest solar water heating systems. It’s an impressive operation and 90% of their water is now heated by solar power, cutting down on firewood consumption by about 50%, the firewood they do use is primarily scraps from the carpentry shop. Walking back to the lodge, a WWII truck lumbers by … in fine repair and daily use. Reduce/reuse? That’d be Gibb’s Farm.

Oh but back to those gorgeous, decadent bathrooms… deep soaking tubs, indoor and outdoor showers. You already know that the water is solar heated, but isn’t a truly luxurious bath multi-galloned, excessive and wasteful? Not when your tub water has a second career.

Grey water from guest baths, laundry and the kitchen are reclaimed in a water treatment system that leverages the natural filtration properties of calla lilies, papyrus and cat tails to clean the water on its way to irrigate the property’s ample organic crops. Naturally born, it’s the prettiest water filtration system I’ve ever seen.

Truly a slice of heaven on earth, one can follow a fresh farm meal with a lengthy meander through the flower-saturated grounds at Gibb’s Farm, myriad bird calls echoing across the property. Elephants trumpet from the fields below as the staff congregate, raising their voices in song, marching toward the interlopers, urging them out of the crops back into neighboring Ngorogoro Crater.

Take an interpretive hike with a Maasai healer, visit with an artist in residence or simply retire to the quiet of your porch to listen to the cheerful crow and chuckle of farm life, watching the sun shift across the verdant landscape. A longstanding good neighbor that happens to be a luxurious wayside, Gibbs Farm’s delivers environmental responsibility, social mindfulness and charm in spades.

Generations of families have been a part of the Gibb’s Farm workforce - most staff have worked at Gibb’s for 10 years; many over 20 years. 99% local,  the staff receives free healthcare - services that are extended to their families.

Gibb’s Farm backs the Karatu Education Fund that services several area schools, supporting the construction of new buildings and establishing a “sponsor a student” program that enables Gibb’s Farm guests to help local children attend secondary school.

In an effort to stem the tide of deforestation + proliferation of exotic species, Gibb’s Farm established an on-site nursery of native tree species that supplies a grassroots conservation organization named Mazingira Bora Karatu (translated: “A Better Environment for Karatu). MBK promotes environmental awareness and conservation, planting native trees and promoting rehabilitation of degraded lands throughout the region.

The actual farming part of the Gibb’s Farm operation is formidable:  30 acres of coffee, 10 acres of vegetables, fruits, flowers and herbs, a working dairy and pig farm, all of which are treated solely by organic pest management and fertilization processes. A remarkable 80% of the food served at Gibb’s is raised on the property, the remainder is sourced locally. The glorious raw materials are not wasted.

I’d like to preface this by stating that I come from a city that has a vibrant food culture and a lot of damn good places to eat. In addition, I’d been apprised prior to my trip that one can’t count on food safety in Africa so I had figured that I’d spend most of my time on the continent drinking beer and bottled water, eating bananas and hard boiled eggs. And while I found myself pleasantly surprised by meals in a number of places we visited, nothing rivaled eating in my hometown.

Until our first meal at Gibb’s.

It was like getting religion. Fresh and finely executed:  Oven warm bread, tender meats with flavorful, light-handed sauces, crisp, bright vegetables and a main course finished with property grown French press coffee, bread pudding, pot de crème….can I get a…”Hell, yeah”? We barged into the kitchen and gave the staff a round of applause.

Alright, we’ve dug into Gibb’s Farm history, community, crops and incredible meals. Can there be more? Come into my lair, said the spider to the fly.

Amongst its charms? Location, location, location: A short distance from Lake Manyara National Park, Gibb’s Farm also shares a mile long property border with Ngorogoro Conservation Area (NCA) where the world’s largest unbroken, unflooded volcanic caldera lies. Ngorogoro Crater hosts virtually every species of East African wildlife with an estimated 25,000 animals living within the crater including herds of zebra, gazelle, and wildebeest alongside the “big five” of rhinoceros, lion, leopard, elephant, and African buffalo. If it’s critters you want to see, it’s critters you’ll get, right next door to Gibb’s Farm.

The NCA also includes the Olduvai Gorge, one of the most important prehistoric sites in the world (you may have also heard of it by its familiar alias, “The Cradle of Humanity”). Research and excavation work in Olduvai, pioneered by Mary and Louis Leakey in the 1950s, has been instrumental in furthering understanding of early human evolution, producing evidence that various hominid species have occupied the area for 3 million years. During her tenure in the region, Mary Leakey befriended former Gibb’s Farm owner Margaret Gibbs. Mary was a frequent guest to the lodge and fan of its spectacular gardens that, as she describes:

“…generously supplied my camps with superb fresh vegetables, so essential to our well being.”

The wealth from Gibb’s Farm gardens that enchanted Mary Leakey have been retained and possibly even elevated - the 30 acre organic farm, crops that include coffee alongside fruits and vegetables, provide 80% of the bounty that Gibb’s Farm guests enjoy at every meal on the property.

Layer 1 of Gibb’s Farm: it has a very, very pretty face. Glasses of fresh avocado juice are offered in welcome upon our arrival (I kid you not and have no idea what it takes to extract avocado juice, but it was amazing). As we entered the property, a series of low slung, clean-lined, unassuming guest quarters came into view, their borders graced with a profusion of verdant tropical plants and tempestuously hued flowers, birdlife a-chatter in the trees…Is this for real?

Then I was taken to my room - the square footage alone makes one the the envy of most NYC apartment dwellers, the porch overlooking a reed pond alive with weaverbirds under a shady canopy of avocado and acacia trees.  The cottage was well appointed without being ostentatious -box beam ceilings and smooth, rich wood floors;  a fireplace that faced both the sleeping quarters and a heavenly bathroom - a massive, extremely private yet flooded with natural light.   Did I mention the outdoor shower? The two-person Terrazzo soaking tub? For a girl who’d spent the better part of the month grubbier than she’s been since age 6, it was a slice of high end spa heaven.

But really… with all this seeming decadence, how can this place embrace responsible tourism? All that space? What of the waste, the apparent epic use of water? Gallons of greenwashing, surely.

But that’s what THRILLS us about this lovely African safari wayside… it’s anything but.

Follow us to the back stage and the surrounding community - you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

The region of Burunge lies just south of Manyara Ranch - another region AWF identified as critical to wildlife migrating between Lake Manyara National Park and Tarangire National Park as well as the region’s overall ecosystem. However, unlike the large, singularly held property at Manyara Ranch, Burunge consists of 9 villages representing about 30,000 residents. AWF faced a new set of challenges getting 9 separate villages to align on conservation-focused management for 60,000 acres of community lands.

Their efforts began with education, engaging key members of the 9 villages and conducting village level seminars regarding the benefits to protecting and promoting their wildlife-rich region as a tourism destination.

AWF worked side by side with the villagers, talking through issues ranging from conservation policies and the benefits of community-based natural resource management to the land use planning and ultimately the demarcation of designated land for what would become the Burunge WMA (Wildlife Management Area).

The people of the Burunge WMA came out on the side of conservation, moving people and buildings away from key migration areas to minimize human wildlife conflict, encouraging and protecting the ready flow of animals through their region.  Two short years later, the Burunge WMA now benefits from more than 50% of the income generated from operations of two new safari lodges, the Maramboi Tented Lodge and Lake Burunge Tented Lodge, monies that are distributed to the 9 WMA member villages, supporting numerous community development projects including health services and the construction of 3 schools.

The region now has more than 40 village game scouts who’ve received formal vocational training. Game scouts coordinate anti-poaching and wildlife monitoring patrols, promoting conservation outreach among the nine WMA villages with an overall effect of encouraging positive attitudes toward wildlife conservation amongst local residents and reducing poaching.

In a tidy room on the roadside in Mwada, the speaker and representatives of the nine member villages in the Burunge WMA educated us on their organization’s history and programs, after which they inquired earnestly as to what we in the United States have done to achieve our successes in conservation. Well, we’ve set aside lands for parks.  That’s good, right?

And then I considered the myriad species and habitats we have sent to the brink or straight into extinction in our brief 200+ years as a country and the irony of our giving conservation advice to people who have lived in this region for thousands of years without a parking lot, shopping mall or subdivision gracing their landscape. Their lack of our western concept of “progress” has kept their skies filled with birds, elephants and buffalo lumbering through their crops - inconvenient neighbors but not subject to annihilation for the affront.

We told them that we were, in fact, here to learn from them - people who haven’t been raised believing they were supposed to blow more than their share of the earth’s finite natural resources. The WMA members had opted in to save and protect their resources before they were too far gone, giving them a more rewarding return on their efforts.

One of countless lessons from Africa: On occasion, progress defies its own definition.

Among the most readily-recognized ethnic groups in Africa due to their distinct dress, fierce adherence to their traditional ways and residence adjacent to national parks, the Maasai are a pastoralist society with an aversion to hunting birds and game animals.  In a historic context (some might say to their demise), the Maasai were de facto conservationists and their lands have held the richest wildlife populations. Maasai land was appropriated wholesale and turned the region’s most significant wildlife preserves and national parks: Amboseli, Nairobi National Park, Maasai Mara, Samburu, Lake Nakuru, and Tsavo in Kenya; Manyara, Ngorongoro, Tarangire and Serengeti in Tanzania.

Conservative by tradition and skeptical from having their remarkably well-preserved land appropriated by the government, the Maasai remain significant stakeholders in land dealings near the national parks, the wellness of their communities mirror Tanzania’s challenge to balance conservation and needs of local residents.

One of the most significant projects on the Maasai Steppe in Northern Tanzania is the Manyara Ranch and the establishment of the Tanzanian Land Conservation Trust (TCLT).

Think of a figure 8.  Put a square in the center and shade it in grey.   The upper section of the 8 is Lake Manyara National Park.   The lower section is Tarangire National Park.  The grey square is Manyara Ranch, which until recently, was privately held land.

As one might suspect, wildlife in Africa is no more gifted than wildlife elsewhere… they don’t understand property lines and Manyara Ranch’s location is an obvious corridor for animal migration between the two parks.  Established in the 40s as a cattle ranch, the owner willed the property to the government when he passed in the 60s.  Ensuing private lessees ran sub par businesses (and were not exactly stellar land stewards). The Tanzanian government reclaimed the area, at a crossroads as to what to do with the property.

Recognizing it as a critical wildlife corridor directly affecting wildlife in two significant national parks, the AWF spearheaded the formation of Tanzania Land Conservation Trust (the first trust of its kind in eastern Africa) and the acquisition of Manyara Ranch.

Their accomplishments since the establishment of the TLCT:

• Manyara Ranch had long operated a primary school to educate ranch employee children (the majority of whom were Maasai). TLCT recognized several issues with the school including the inevitable human/wildlife conflict in having a school in a key wildlife corridor, not to mention the Ranch school’s profoundly dilapidated and overcrowded conditions in both classrooms and dormitories. The TLCT has built a new facility outside the wildlife corridor. To give an example of the enhancements - each child now has their own bunk, formerly packed together with 4 children to a single bunk. Overcrowding is an understatement of former conditions and the improvement is marked.

The Maasai deal in cows. They are cash, status and subject of constant conversation, but traditional pastoralist society hasn’t been completely in step with leveraging their assets for the modern day market. Ironically, in this cattle filled land, much of the beef provided in high-end restaurants is imported from Kenya and South Africa due to a dearth of high quality, reliable local beef processors and distributors.  The AWF aims to change that and has established a series of projects to improve the financial rewards to the Maasai for raising livestock:

• - Creation of a livestock feedlot at Manyara Ranch to improve cattle health and yield, providing education in key sale ages of livestock.
• - Acreage set aside on the ranch for local Maasai to use for grazing during drought.
• - Construction of a local abattoir (sexy French name for the unsexy English word “slaughterhouse“) and teaching Maasai about the increased profitability of processing younger, healthier cows inside Tanzania instead of shipping their herds to neighboring countries with a fraction of the financial reward.

In addition, AWF worked with local Maasai women to create of the Isilalei Cultural Boma, a women-run cultural tourism destination that is an income generating pursuit that educates visitors to Maasai lifestyles and traditions.

And while the aforementioned is very factual, it’s a rather boring description.  We visited Isilalei.  Our introduction to the women of the boma (village) was striking…  greeted by a large group of tall, deeply black, beautiful women of varied ages, heads shaved, children wrapped ‘round their backs, ears and necks heavy with jewelry, bodies swathed in rich reds and radiant indigo.  Standing 3 feet away with no shared language between us, I am certain that they stared at me with my pink skin, tee shirt and floppy hat in similar wonder, my visage as strange to them as theirs to me.

They welcomed us with dance, song, tours of their homes and herds, cups of tea. As the boys shot footage, I approached a group of women and children.  A woman with a child on her back put a traditional thick Maasai necklace around my neck. I did an attempted rendition of their jumping dance that evoked laughter… one woman stood at my shoulder and sang the tune as I bounced and shrugged my shoulders… the children reeled.  Formality falling away, the women came closer and we admired each other’s accoutrements, inspecting ear piercings, footwear and jewelry… something I suppose we women instinctually do wherever we land.

Support, education, exposure and elevation for the Maasai - just a small portion of the great things that AWF is doing in Africa… next stop, Wildlife Management Areas.

At 1,000 square kilometers, Nyungwe is the largest mountain rainforest in Africa and one of the most ancient, dating back to before the ice age.

After traveling for days in Uganda and Rwanda’s heavily cultivated landscapes, crossing into Nyungwe was nothing short of a breathtaking. It was a journey into a rainforest primeval that, that in light of humanity’s powerful influence outside the park gates, evoked awe and inspiration. I knew there was an Africa that looked like this.

In recent history, Nyungwe provided sanctuary to more than just flora and fauna. Refugees from regional conflicts, including the 1994 genocide, fled into the park, living on Nyungwe’s resources until they could exit safely. During times of human crisis, the park has been profoundly taxed and it could have so easily been destroyed to meet the human population’s ever-burgeoning demands but it has, instead, been saved and protected - good news for all.

Rich in biodiversity with 240 species of trees and over 140 species of orchid, Nyungwe is a birder’s paradise, considered the most important ornithological site in Rwanda, harboring almost 300 species including the spectacular Blue Turaco, which was described as a “blue Elvis chicken”, as well as a “blue, red and green bird - flocks travel from tree to tree like a procession of streamlined psychedelic turkeys”. I’m not a birder but how can a description like that not pique your curiousity?

In a country made famous for the mountain gorilla, Nyungwe’s main tourist draw is the primate. Home to 13 species of primate (representing 1/5^th of Africa’s primate species), Nyungwe National Park offers chimpanzee tracking as well as tours that visit troops of L’Hoest’s monkey, Angola Colobus and other habituated species including the Mangaby and Blue Monkey.

Organizations including ORTPN and USAID’s Destination Nyungwe Project are working to make lush but little-known Nyungwe a sustainable ecotourism destination by improving and extending the park’s network of trails and promoting it to gorilla trackers who want to experience the breadth of species and pre-historic beauty in this rugged, ecologically rich national treasure.

As the park visitor numbers increase, communities outside the park are able to benefit. Park employees are hired from the local population and communities near the park are developing tours to their villages that offer visitors a view into their traditions and culture.

Trail time in Nyungwe is a feast for the eyes: orchids dripping color under the thick canopy, monkeys chattering overhead, swinging their way through the treetops, hilltop vistas of Lake Kivu and into Burundi and Congo (DRC) - a unique hike through a landscape that time, thankfully, forgot.

Tick tock, indeed.

Mountain bike pioneer Tom Ritchey founded Project Rwanda after a trip to the region in 2005, partnering with SPREAD to assist Rwanda’s rural farmers by “furthering the economic development of Rwanda through initiatives based on the bicycle as a tool and symbol of hope.” Ritchey created a custom cargo bike created for coffee farmers, designed tough enough to endure Rwanda’s rugged terrain and strong enough to haul up to 400 lbs.

SPREAD, Bikes to Rwanda, Vision Finance, and Scallywags Bike Shop united behind the farmers’ cause and, thanks to their efforts, there are over 1,000 coffee cargo bikes in Rwanda, empowering farmers to get their crops to washing stations more quickly, ensuring that they get optimal payment for their efforts. Through a micro-credit system offered within coffee cooperatives, farmers are able to pay for their bikes with the additional income they earn from the increased quality of their coffee.  In addition, for the numerous days that coffee doesn’t have to be sped to market, coffee bikes contribute to a better quality of life for farmers and their families, enabling them to haul anything you can imagine without the burden of fueling up a gas tank - construction materials, crates of chickens,  treetops of bananas, furniture, family members… really, you have to see it to believe it…

A round of applause to the tremendous efforts and overwhelmingly positive results from the work of SPREAD and Project Rwanda that have helped invigorate the economy, improving lives and elevating a product and profession that Rwandans can be extremely proud of… well done.

More information at: http://www.spreadproject.org/

Introduced by the Germans in the 1900s, coffee in Rwanda is cultivated on small, family run farms where coffee plant counts average in the low hundreds, but for decades, the Rwandan coffee market had been state run and coffee was sent into local markets with very little in the way of quality standards. Farmers traded on volume, not quality, so inferior product, along with dirt and rocks, were sent to retail assuring a reputation of mediocrity for Rwandan coffee on the international market.

In the years following the 1994 genocide, all governmental operations were reconsidered and certain programs, including national coffee production, were completely overhauled. SPREAD (Sustaining Partnerships to Enhance Rural Enterprise), a USAID-funded development alliance of institutes, industries and NGOs, helped identify Rwandan coffee as a potentially powerful economic driver for the recovering nation: a widely produced crop that could command top dollar if very high levels of quality control and premium products were properly marketed and consistently delivered retail.

SPREAD supports coffee co-ops that use farmers’ collective selling power along with the creation of coffee washing stations that enforce quality control from the moment coffee arrives from the field as cherries (the bean itself the seed of the fruit of the coffee plant). Farmers are paid on pure weight of quality cherries while substandard cherries and detritus are discarded. By significantly raising the quality of Rwandan coffee, the international coffee market rewards producers by paying 3 to 5 times the price per pound for superior product.

Dr. Tim Schilling, director and program coordinator of SPREAD, sees Rwanda as a coffee growing paradise, explaining that Rwandan coffee crops are 100% small-holder produced. Small crops allow farmers to seriously fuss over their plants and the care the predominantly heirloom plants receive here results in premium product with a unique flavor profile that rightfully commands top dollar on the international coffee market.

One of the finest examples of Rwanda’s success in these pursuits has been the elevation of the Bourbon varietal grown in the Maraba area. Within recent years, specialty coffee companies have developed a keen regard for Maraba Bourbon and will pay for particularly esteemed harvests at prices previously unheard of for African coffee on the international market.

Good for just a few coffee producers? Consider this: based on recent estimates, there are 500,000 coffee farmers in Rwanda (a country of about 9 million) and coffee-related income that affects 40 to 50 percent of Rwanda’s population.

With the increasing focus on high quality Rwandan coffee, the farmers received a powerful education in the volatile nature of their crop and the very direct relationship of time to money. Anyone who’s ever used a messenger service to deliver documents in a gridlocked city can appreciate the can-do of a bike in time critical environments.

Enter the coffee bike. Follow me….

Walking the school property, practicality blended with beauty… rows of bright green cabbages, carefully crafted gravel pathways, prolific groves of banana trees, healthy cows… and students who were benefiting from exposure to simple, common sense technologies that would be considered edgy in the western world.

There’s no education like outright exposure so keep an eye peeled for those Stella Matutina graduates - they’ve got smarts to share. Read on…

As a school utterly off the grid, GEF/ UNDP became involved with the school to help them make steps toward self-sufficiency, teaching educators and students integrated resource management and created an “education in action” school for environmental education that taught conservation, organic farming and sustainable sanitation.

An all-girls school with 430 students, the school received a generous donation and assistance from the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) who helped the design and build a biogas system that would provide an alternative to charcoal and firewood to fuel the school’s kitchen.

Biogas, for the uninitiated, is the methane created by human and animal waste, harvested for fuel. Yep, just that sexy… septic tanks gone wild. But truly, it’s quite wonderful what poo can do for you. I’ll give it an official “ick” on introducing the concept, but it’s really simple, sanitary and smart.

Underground receptacles store waste from the school latrines as well as manure from the school’s resident livestock. Methane rises off the tanks, which flow into gas lines that lead into the school’s kitchen, fueling the commercial cooking burners. While not eliminating the use of firewood, biogas now does the lion’s share of fuel for cooking most of the school’s meals.

Back when the school’s kitchens were reliant on firewood, it took 100 cubic meters of wood to run the kitchen for 9 months. In 2006, after the inception of the biogas program, the school bought another 100 cubic meters of firewood. By March of 2008, they still had half of their original purchase, 50 cubic meters of firewood, left. So, less firewood usage is a good thing!

But biogas is just part of the environmental education at Stella Matutina Secondary School. Like the Gorilla Organization sponsored water cistern projects in Ruhengeri, the school leverages almost daily rainfall and broad classroom roofs to feed massive water cisterns for the school’s drinking and cooking water supply. Students are involved in the acres of gardens on school grounds and all vegetables (yes, ALL vegetables) served in meals for over 400 students are grown in school organic gardens - no mean feat!

Rwanda ‘s population density is the highest in Africa. In Kigali, primary fuels for cooking are charcoal + wood and in rural Rwanda, wood is the main fuel source - with all that wood-fueled cooking, pollution and deforestation are significant challenges. Established in 2002, ACEN (Association for the Conservation of the Environment), is a cooperative supported by the GEF and UNDP that collects household waste from 12,000 families in Kigali. The waste is brought to a central facility where sorters collect high cellulose components from the refuse including tree and plant fibers: compost, paper, cardboard and wood scrap.

These materials are dried, shredded and compressed into briquettes, a cooking fuel that is far more efficient and cleaner burning than wood or charcoal.But now for a sense of scale: This operation produces 14 tons of briquettes per day that are sold primarily to factories, schools and other institutions. ACEN employs 133 people, the majority of which are women, many of whom are widows and former sex workers, over 50% of them are living with HIV.

ACEN provides its employees with vocational training and daily meals along with a living wage and community - keys to empowerment for people who would otherwise be marginalized, disenfranchised and likely living in abject poverty.

The positives of ACEN’s efforts are multifold:

• Harvesting materials from city waste reduces overall garbage. Aside from making for a cleaner city, it also results in a pronounced reduction of methane that would otherwise have been released into the environment had it been left to decompose.

• The briquettes produced from the waste products are more energy efficient, cleaner burning and cheaper than charcoal or wood.

• It’s a sustainable business in every sense of the word - reducing, reusing garbage, providing a necessary service, creating jobs + offering services and training - empowerment and better lives for the marginalized.

ACEN is just beginning to crack distribution to private households - presently they have only sold about 50 in-home cooking stoves. A typical family will spend about 14,000 Rwandan Francs (about 25 US dollars) on charcoal a month. With the cleaner burning, more energy efficient briquettes, the cost goes down to 2,000 per month (less than 8 dollars) along with the one time purchase of a briquette stove, which runs 8-15,000 (15-28 dollars).

More efficient, kinder to the environment, and more economical…why, then, isn’t everyone adopting them?

A simple phrase: hand to mouth living.

Very few households can buy all their monthly charcoal one purchase - they buy just enough to get them through the next few days, a few thousand francs at a time. The outright purchase of a stove, without the briquettes, is more than most of Rwandans have in their pocket, leaving them overextended with no money left to buy fuel to cook with, defeating the purpose of the purchase.

But solutions are in the works: ACEN is gearing up to increase production of high efficiency briquette stoves. GEF is working to create a micro loan program that will make stove purchases much more accessible to the average Rwandan household. Together, ACEN and GEF have created an exciting, sustainable success story that’s benefiting many with the potential of helping countless others.