28th March 2017 Edition
By Celeste Alexander
Moorhouse family saving lives
Three generations of women from the Moorhouse family are doing some inspiring humanitarian work with villages throughout the Pacific Islands.
Jill Moorhouse, Nic Reddington, Bec Moorhouse, Sarah Bates, and Samantha Thomas own Kiwi Clean Living company which sells the ACE1 Biomass cooker, a solar-powered product that was designed by a family friend (Walker family) in Africa.
This cooker was originally designed to save thousands of lives in Africa, Syria and throughout the world.
The Walker family owned a vineyard that was situated on the Moorhouse’s property in Marlborough and a friendship was developed.
When the Walker family campaigning to provide safe and clean water, energy, warmth, shelter, and survival technology, the Moorhouse family knew they wanted to be involved.
“We asked them, ‘can we do that too?’,” Jill says.
“We were inspired to help our Island neighbors thanks to the RSE workers that come to Marlborough to work in the viticulture.
“We hear stories about the injuries, serious health issues and even death that occurs when they are cooking over open fires in their huts. We immediately knew this cooker would save lives,” Sarah adds.
The family, through Kiwi Clean Living, began a sponsorship programme by donating the first cooker to a widower from the Maniava settlement village in Fiji. A second was donated by the Reverand Dawn Daunauda of the Awatere Joint venture.
Dawn traveled to the village to demonstrate and deliver the cookers and returned to describe the life-threatening experiences and natural disasters that were affecting the villagers.
The next island set to benefit from the cookers is in the South-Western Pacific nation of Vanuatu.
Local early childhood teacher Angela Gray has been appealing for donations to send to the locals, so in response, the Moorhouse family have got involved.
“We are now raising funds so we can send our cookers to Vanuatu with Angela on her next trip to the island of Lelepa. We were thrilled to have a local family donate five cookers to go along with one we are sending, as well as six Mako’s rugby balls from Tasman Rugby.
“We are also working on finding water tanks that can be donated to the school and kindergarten children have clean drinking water available without having to row the 8km return trip every day to collect water,” Sarah says.
Next on the list for the Moorhouse family is to help the RSE workers living and working in Marlborough.
“Ideally what we would love to see is for each worker to be able to take a cooker with them when they return home.
“We would love the viticulture companies to get on board to help their workers cover the costs of a cooker. The large majority of them still cook over an open fire,” Sarah says.
To help kickstart this initiative the Moorhouse family will give each RSE worker their first $30 towards the cookers in a programme they have created.
“The RSE workers can then pay the cookers off. It’s our way of trying to help them as it’s a valuable tool they can take home to their families and potentially save lives.
Lelepa Island Donations
Kiwi Clean Living was approached by Kindergarten teacher Angela Gray after she had heard about our sponsorship programme.
We were told about the plight of a small island village to the Northwest of Vanuatu.
The islands school and kindergarten were devastated in a cyclone in 2015 followed by drought.
It had taken over a year and ½ to rebuild the school in a temporary grass hut.
Money is very scarce on the island and they have to travel to the mainland every day for fresh drinking water over 4 km by boat, they also have to travel to the main land to charge cell phones as they have no electricity on the island, access to communication is extremely important to them in a disaster to call for help due to their isolation. Most families still travel by canoes for the round trip of 8km a day.
All of the locals cook over open fires and a lot of them have eye and respiratory problems due to the smoke inhalations from the fires. Hospitals and doctors are very expensive for locals and once again very scarce.
The school, kindergarten and the church are the local meeting areas for the locals.
Kiwi Clean Living were so happy that we could gift the island of Lelepa 6 ACE 1 cookstoves to be used in the school, kindergarten and the church for the local villages to cook without smoke and have access to lighting and to charge cell phones as needed.
In 2017 this was made possible by the most generous donation from a local New Zealand family whom also made it possible to send 3 cookstoves to the Ambae Island refugee projects after their island was evacuated due to volcanic eruptions. This same family has also helped villages in the outer islands of Epi and Aniwa with another 2 ACE1 cookstoves donated.
Having the support of generous donors like the Bishop family makes all the difference to the lives of villages in need. By creating change with the help of you and the ACE 1 we can save lives and protect the environment reducing c02 emissions.
Kiwi Clean Living hope to make more donations throughout the Pacific island via our sponsorship programme where every online purchase of an ACE 1 Off the Grid Cooker $30 can go towards a village in need. We also welcome generous donations of cookstoves from corporate sponsorship and the public.
“Join the cooking revolution! Creating change one cookstove at a time”
Donation of cookstove to Fijian Cyclone victim.
To begin our Pacific Islands project we had the opportunity to donate an ACE1 Biomass Cooker.
Thanks to Revd Dawn Daunauda of the Awatere Joint venture who made this possible by taking our ACE1 cooker with her on the Golden Oldies trip to help rebuild a village in Fiji.
It was donated to a Widowed villager in the Maniava settlement village three hours north-west of Suva Fiji. Their ancestors were ‘blackbirded’ – taken as slaves from the Solomon Islands to Fiji – by the British (around 1860) who needed labor to process the sugar cane. These people have no right to any land and can be moved on at any time by their Fijian landlords. There are over 100,000 descendants in Fiji – very vulnerable people caught in a cycle of poverty. The NZ Anglican Church has purchased some land so this particular community doesn’t have to move on. However, during Cyclone Winston, 33/37 houses were destroyed. The widow’s house was destroyed. The men of the village carried her to safety underneath the floor of another house. Since then she hasn’t been able to speak although she is functioning and capable in every other way.
When Revd Dawn demonstrated the ACE1in Fiji she said there was A LOT of interest shown.
Since her trip, Revd Dawn has kindly donated another ACE1 biomass cooker for a widowed mother who also lives in an outlying village and cooks over an open fire.
Revd Dawn Daunauda of the Awatere Joint venture gifting the ACE1 Biomass Cooker to Reverend Claude Fong Toy Dean of the Cathedral in Suva.
