It’s another small victory against the forces of darkness, confusion and despair!
Thanks to you, Makenson and his family are really happy to be able to move forward with their great initiative for Haiti! A big thank you to everyone for your support of the crowdfunding for the PAIN SOLEIL solar bakery project!
As an impact company, it is not our mission to support projects in a humanitarian way – that is the work of NGOs – but we are happy to do it whenever we’re asked. It’s really energizing to see that there’s a community out there, truly motivated and sharing our enthusiasm for Lytefire.
By now, we are happy and humbled to say that thanks to you we have already carried out and succeeded in all our crowdfundings. In 2012 we crowdfunded for R&D, in 2015 to launch our model of a solar solution for micro-entrepreneurs, in 2020 for the Women of Goghin group in Burkina-Faso in partnership with the SOS Energie association, in 2022 for 3 solar bakers in East Africa – and this winter for Haiti.
Makenson Merisca, is a courageous man and father of 3 young kids. We have known him for a long time and we saw him trying his best to spread solar ovens with us in Haïti. But a new local crisis happened again a few years ago and we had to stop the cooperation. Like many, Makenson had to protect his family and survive. To do so, he came up with the idea of building his own Lytefire solar oven, leaving the city to settle in a small piece of land at Forêt de Pins, away from Port-au-Prince and the gang wars.
After working in cabbage fields, saving every penny (or actually Haitian Gourdes), Makenson copied the solar oven we installed a long time ago for an NGO, measuring everything as he could. He then bought the material and patiently built it piece by piece. This proud father didn’t ask for anything from us for months, he just did it and now he is ready to start his solar bakery with the support of his wife, Lynda, who will help him with accounting and the ingredients inventory!
When he’s ready with his Lytefire DIY solar oven, he can bake up to 110kg of bread, biscuits, pizzas, buns, and anything you wish each day. The taste of the baked goods is the same as in any kind of oven. He knows that he will start a steady business because there are two other bakeries in Forêt de Pins which cannot fulfill the demand. He says that "sometimes we need to wait 3 days in order to get 1000 Gourdes of bread (about 5 Euros)".
Thanks to this campaign, his idea will come to life and his bakery will be called PAIN SOLEIL. He has the solar oven (it’s almost completed), the land, the motivation and now he needs all of us to help purchase cement to make a steady ground for his Lytefire and purchase all the ingredients to start baking.
In Haïti, most of the people are too poor to use anything other than charcoal to cook and bake, and the prices of it are skyrocketing. The forests have been devastated. The electric grid is unstable. So, with PAIN SOLEIL, not only will Makenson create a safe space for his family but he will also show a new way to his clients as well as protecting the environment.
Because, yes, Makenson wishes to go further and when PAIN SOLEIL starts running well, he plans to save monthly to plant 50 trees each year!
His quote for you: “PAIN SOLEIL describes the fruits of the sun in all its beauty et kindness".
