From Kisumu workshop to the well prepared grounds of Don Bosco Institute in Kakuma, Kenya, a solar oven and 3 cookers were well received, assembled and they boast fully lined up together with the previously installed oven ready to continue serving the local Don Bosco Institute.
To continue the wonderful work already started, we created a team of three being Joan Arwa, Hillary Miheso and Samuel Rodrigues to manage another successful training.
In Don Bosco Institute Kakuma, we trained a group of students from different fields (mechanical, carpentry, fitting and turning, accounting, masonry, electrical etc) who were driven to learn more and gain additional knowledge on how to assemble a whole solar fire machine and cooker in readiness to learn how to bake bread, buns, cookies, cakes and we also cooked different meals like beans, lentils, potatoes, and rice using the Lytefire’s solar cookers.
Our first bakery sales were overwhelming and students and teachers were amazed by how delicious the solar buns,bread and cakes were.
After 2 weeks of training we were ready to scale up our cooking to be able to serve not just 20 people but over 100 people! The word overjoyed is an understatement of how we, trainers, and the school administration felt about the scale up. There was confidence, anxiety, happiness, energy and anticipation.
In different days in the third week, with the help of Martha the school cook, we kept on scaling up the amount we could cook using the solar cookers and everyone loved the meals we served. With that, we managed to feed an overwhelming number of students and staff, being 70, 120 and 260 respectively. Each service was truly humbling to us since we managed to prepare upto 39 kg of rice and 10.4 kg of lentils.
By the last days of the 3rd week, the bakery received daily orders of buns not less than 100 pieces and occasional big cake orders of up to 100 pieces or 300 buns. With the guidance of demand of the solar bakery products we are confident we can sell upto a minimum of 500 buns, 106 cupcakes daily by using just one oven.
We are all looking forward to our next training!
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