Losing her husband in a tragic accident three years ago, when she was a mere 23-years-old, Reena’s world came crashing down. With no support from her parents and in-laws, she decided to take care of her three little children all by herself. She started working two jobs as a daily wage labourer in her small village named Raed Phala, in Udaipur district of Rajasthan.
Her day began at 5 AM –helping her kids get ready, preparing meals, and sending them off to the local government school. It took her over an hour to cook their meals in her earthen stove which emitted a lot of smoke and also demanded a lot of money for firewood.
She then made her way to the agriculture fields where she worked hard until noon, often in the scorching afternoon sun. She then came home for lunch and moved to her second job for which she had to walk two kilometres and back. Upon returning home in the evening, she cooked meals for four members of her household and also helped her kids with their studies in the evening, though they often could not complete their lessons because of frequent power cuts in her village.
Life was not easy.
Despite the long days at the field and long hours in the kitchen, she was not able to make enough money to survive. She was then introduced to Udaipur Urja Initiatives (UUI) and the improved cookstoves, a clean cooking solution that could save her time, money as well as bring a small change in her living standard. She bought a pair of stoves under UUI’s flagship ‘Improved Cookstoves’ project and became one of its first users in the village.
This marked a change in her life.
She prepared meals on the improved stoves which consumed less fire-wood and emitted much lesser smoke, also significantly reducing the time to cook. This helped reduce her workload, saved up to a minimum of two hours every day and helped her earn money from the savings on fuel-wood. She also enabled access to the stoves to 200 other households of Raed Phala, which enabled her to make a stable monthly income from monitoring the stoves and helping the household adopt the same.
UUI’s flagship Improved Cookstoves (ICS) project is aimed at reducing carbon emission and providing access to better technology to last-mile households. In addition, UUI has also introduced portable solar lighting solutions which has resulted in improvement of the local environment & living conditions of the households. UUI also gave Reena an opportunity to become a ‘village monitor’ to sell solar products & agri-input tools to the farming households. The incentive-based model not only added to her income but led to positive changes in the lives of the communities she served. Women from marginalised communities are rarely offered such support. Reena’s story is an example of how women would go to great lengths and excel when offered unbiased, equal opportunities. UUI is on a mission to bring about a change at the grassroots & so far has successfully engaged & empowered over 250+ women like Reena, from remote locations of Southern Rajasthan.
