The African woman remains to be a symbol of hard work and determination in today’s modern struggle.
Women spend most of their work in the farms, market, rivers all in the fight to have something to prepare for the evening meal. After the day’s struggle and once that something small for the evening is within, the rural woman has to again scout and comb the homestead for pieces of wood to use as fuel for cooking.
In some cases, the woman has to involve her kids whom she assigns the tasks of looking for firewood after school or on their way from school. This stands as the standard practice in the 65 per cent of Kenya’s rural households that are dependent on firewood as their cooking fuel.
With climate change and global warming being a concern across the globe, there is need for something to be done to empower the rural women seek alternative cooking fuel and aid in the war against deforestation.
It is against this background that some young people have come together to give their small solution to this global threat. Operating under Digito Home, they make it possible for women in poor rural households to own and use gas as an alternative to wood fuel.
After sensitising the community on the need to conserve the environment, the women, who in most cases come from the same locality, are trained on the importance and effectiveness of gas and its significance role in the war against deforestation and environmental conservation as a whole.
The women are later trained on how to use the cooking gas cylinders through demonstrations where each member gets a chance to fix,
light and use a complete gas cylinder. The members are then taken through the various Digito Home packages through which each member chooses the mode of payment that is friendlier and most convenient to her.
The women then form groups of five where they each pick their group name and choose their leader. Each member is then issued with
her complete cooking gas cylinder (filled with all accessories) ready to take home for immediate use.
Asked why they doing all these, one of Digito Home’s director, Okeri Nyabuto, "It’s simple. Our mothers deserve the best. We want to offer them the best in our own small way.”
The members are later issued with seedlings of their choice to plant as they begin their active role as local agents for environmental conservation. Digito Home hopes to roll out the programme in all the 47 counties.