Our Mission
The mission of The Charcoal Project is to promote, facilitate, and advocate for the widespread adoption of clean burning technologies, sustainable fuel alternatives, and policies that support energy-poverty alleviation for those who depend on biomass as their primary fuel around the world.
The Vision
The vision of The Charcoal Project is to significantly increase the use of energy efficient stoves, improved kilns, and sustainable biomass fuels for the world’s energy poor.
How We Do It
Executing the Mission
The Charcoal Project fulfills its mission by:
1. Building a global network among stakeholders in the bioenergy field and by raising public awareness about the issue in ways that leads to meaningful and measurable outcomes.
2. Becoming a stakeholder in projects that tangibly and significantly advance the use of energy efficient technologies.
3. Engaging the private sector, all levels of government, multi-lateral agencies, and civil society in actions that lead to the formulation of meaningful policies and legislation.
Strategies:
A. The Charcoal Project will become the leader in global marketing and communications on the issue of biomass efficiency and sustainability by:
* Creating an online community that brings together direct and indirect stakeholders
* Making the charcoalproject.org website the first stop for anyone interested in the issue
* Crafting and implementing a coordinated and integrated marketing and communications plan
* Becoming the go-to, public interlocutor about the issue
* Becoming a relevant actor in landmark actions that impact the issue
B. The Charcoal Project will facilitate the global expansion of biomass efficiency and bioenergy programs by:
* Providing services and/or financial support to existing and future programs that meet the established priority criteria. Advisory services offered will include, but won’t be limited to, technical expertise, business planning and implementation, marketing & communications support, carbon market optimization.
* Working with partners to establish a suite of standards that will rate individual projects based on their impact on specific areas. (I.e.: public health, poverty alleviation, greenhouse gas emissions, and externalities.)
C. The Charcoal Project will advocate for the passage of global and national policies that enable the establishment of biomass and bionergy programs. It will do so by:
* Engaging government and multi-lateral agencies in actions that result in global policies and legislation supporting global expansion of bioenergy technologies and energy poverty relief.
Where we stand now
In January 2010, The Charcoal Project began the process of incorporating and converting to a 501(c)(3) non-profit entity.
Once we’ve completed this process, we will embark on a broader and deeper fundraising and advocacy campaign while expanding our range of services to include improved marketing and communications, financing, and technical expertise.
Partners
The Charcoal Project is a member of:
Partnership for Clean Indoor Air (PCIA) – More than 300 public and private organizations have joined PCIA and are contributing their resources and expertise to improve health, livelihood, and quality of life by reducing exposure to indoor air pollution, primarily among women and children, from household energy use.
HEDON – The Household Energy Network is a place where practitioners, policy-makers, funders, and business-owners actively pursuing a cleaner, affordable and more efficient household energy sector unite to share their experiences, learn from one another, and create new knowledge.
BioEnergy Lists – This site exists to help people develop better stoves for cooking with biomass fuels in developing regions.
Global Village Energy Partners (GVEP) – GVEP International is an international non profit organization working to reduce poverty by accelerating access to affordable and sustainable energy services.
The Charcoal Project supports:
Darfur Stove Project – DSP’s mission is to improve the safety and well-being of internally displaced persons in Darfur by providing fuel-efficient cookstoves. The Berkeley-Darfur Stove® requires three to four times less fuel than traditional three stone fires, thus reducing the time women spend outside the safety of the camps collecting firewood while also decreasing their use of money and food rations to obtain fuel.
Jeffrey Barbee – Jeff is an independent photographer whose work on AIDS, education and environmental topics appears regularly in The New York Times, Time Magazine, the Guardian, Smithsonian Magazine, Newsweek, GEO and other newspapers and magazines. Jeff has reported at length on the impact of the charcoal trade in Africa.
Wildlife Direct- The mission of WD is to give those who care about wildlife the opportunity to follow day-to-day activities on the ground, to provide support to initiatives of their choice and to read about the actual results that their donations have enabled. WD also gives a voice to frontline conservationists. They report regularly on the charcoal trade in Africa.
Virunga Gorillas – The official website of Virunga National Park in the DRC. Charcoal production in the region is the greatest threat to the endangered mountain gorilla population in Virunga, which is why the park’s leadership has developed a briquettes production program to supply the local population.
Engineers Without Borders - Engineers Without Borders – USA is a non-profit humanitarian organization established to partner with developing communities worldwide in order to improve their quality of life through the implementation of sustainable engineering projects while involving and training internationally responsible engineers and engineering students.
Mercy Corps – Mercy Corps exists to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive and just communities.
Forestry-investment Blog – Sustainably managed forestry is good for the world. UK-based investor and conservationist John Barnes created this blog to share his opinions and provide readers with forestry related news in general, but with a particular emphasis on investing in forestry, its impact on the environment, and the returns that might be available from forestry as an investment.
World Energy Justice – “Energy Justice identifies and responds to the problems of energy access faced by nearly one third of the world’s population currently relying on biomass-based fire to meet all their energy needs, with injurious consequences. Only by bringing together information and decision-makers from a broad range of disciplines – politics, engineering, public health, law, business, economics, and the sciences – can we find viable options to create a world of Energy Justice.” We like that! Good presentations/proceedings from the Oct. 2009 conference held at U.Colorado, Boulder where the org is based.