By Donna Fischer

Battling intense heat, a six-member team made excellent progress toward construction of a shelter in just 3 days, as well as assembling 110 ovens for the Haiti Solar Oven Partners during their July/August trip.

HSOP Photo: Haitian partners Jeanne Milcar (HSOP Fabrication Manager) and Robert celebrate with Sara Bolme, Alex Cleary, Tom Carlson, and Karen Workman, all from McCabe Church in Bismarck. They stand under the newly-constructed shelter between sea containers. Our annual goal is assembling more than 2000 ovens in Haiti and distributing them through training seminars.  

The unrelenting heat also forced postponement of the 2-day cooking seminar. According to director Rick Jost, “There was not nearly enough shade at the container site for 80 people! People and food would have cooked. Those of us who put up that roof also cooked... it must have been 120 degrees there!” Haitian staffers Montas and Raymonde Joseph will conduct the training seminar and distribute ovens at the site in the coming weeks.

HSOP Photo: Tom Carlson (Bismarck McCabe), Haitian Country Director Montas Joseph, HSOP Director Rick Jost (on the ladder) David Stearns (Hartford UMC), and Robert, a Haitian staffer, (on the ladder) secure the roof between two sea containers. This practical adaptation for container storage units gives Fabrication Manager Jeanne Milcar much-needed shelter when she assembles more than 1000 ovens not built by VIM teams.

Team member Karen Workman reported that volunteers shot lots of video on this trip. Look for more on our website Haiti Solar Ovens and on Solar Ovens Partners Facebook. If you aren’t following Facebook yet, please “like” us because we’ll have lots more stories, especially from the teen members Sara Bolme, and Alex Cleary of Bismarck McCabe.

In yet another success story, a $10,000 Cora Foundation grant funded a July 2014 survey team of SDSU students and faculty, led by Dr. Molly Krueger Enz, Associate Professor of French. Look for results when they have processed their data.

HSOP Photo: Boss Dave Stearns of Hartford UMC supervises construction, assisted here by Rick Jost and Robert. The sea containers are re-purposed for storage of oven components. Materials are fabricated at our workshops in Moffit, ND and Volga, SD, are shipped from our HSOP workshop in Brookings, SD. 

The project's goal is to survey approximately 10% of oven recipients. The HSOP needs this independently-gathered data to write grants and to improve services. Two prior independent surveys documented how previous recipients of solar ovens use them.

Next, the HSOP gears up for interviewing and hiring an Associate Director. Watch for news soon.