Visual Project Management | Grant Work: The Power of Poo: Biogas_Paskova_003

Smoke rises as twelve-year-old Sandra Gihozo blows onto a pot of beans, stoking the wooden fire beneath it in Mount Kigali village in Rwanda, on November 12, 2017. Her aunt Ruth Uwamahoro says Sandra's eyes and throat often hurt from the smoke, and that wood gathering sometimes makes her miss schoolwork.Nearly half of all Rwandans live in poverty, relying on small-scale farming for survival without gas or electricity. With so many women and children spending hours of the day foraging for wood used for cooking and light, often damaging their eyes, lungs, the forests and atmosphere, a little inventiveness helps. Enter cow and enter pig -- not just as a source of food, but also the heat needed to cook it. Or more specifically, their poo -- the fuel fed to a biogas digester, a tank that converts organic waste into methane.

Smoke rises as twelve-year-old Sandra Gihozo blows onto a pot of beans, stoking the wooden fire beneath it in Mount Kigali village in Rwanda, on November 12, 2017. Her aunt Ruth Uwamahoro says Sandra's eyes and throat often hurt from the smoke, and that wood gathering sometimes makes her miss schoolwork. 

Nearly half of all Rwandans live in poverty, relying on small-scale farming for survival without gas or electricity. With so many women and children spending hours of the day foraging for wood used for cooking and light, often damaging their eyes, lungs, the forests and atmosphere, a little inventiveness helps. Enter cow and enter pig -- not just as a source of food, but also the heat needed to cook it. Or more specifically, their poo -- the fuel fed to a biogas digester, a tank that converts organic waste into methane.