Welcome Lisa!

 From September 2011 Lisa Brinkley from Engineers Without Borders  Australia will be joining the Namuna team in Bhairahawa for 10 months to continue Sarbagya's work aimed at finding a safe solution for cooking with dried dung fuel.

Lisa's story....

Lisa with her pet cat!

On a 4Wheel Drive trip across Africa in 2009 spaning 6 months from South Africa to the United Kingdom my partner and I were privileged enough to see many amazing things. Two images in particular have etched themselves on my mind for completely different reasons. Majestic lion cubs in Zimbabwe being primed for reintroduction into the wild and the sides of the roads en-route to see mountain gorillas in Uganda being lined with bags of charcoal. A visit to the last remaining strong hold of the Mountain Gorillas only highlighted the desperate environmental situation facing the remaining forest.

The need to cook is fundamental to the locals and the charcoal industry was being driven by the needs of an ever demanding population. It was clear that Change needed to occur and so when I learnt about the clean burning stoves being developed in Nepal in conjunction with EWB and Universities in Australia I saw an opportunity to be part of driving that change. Clean burning equated in my mind to efficient use of fuels and a reduction in the demands on the environment.

Briefly, I graduated from Mechanical engineering in the late 80’s having completed a traineeship in the local Steel Works and then went on to work in Power Generation, Oil and Gas, Defence and Building Construction before commencing my own transport engineering business called VEHTEC in the late 90’s. For the last five years in addition to running VEHTEC I have also been involved in an engineering body building business and spent the last four years as a Councillor in Local Government.

As a business owner I appreciate that success comes from understanding the needs of the customers and satisfying those needs at a price that the customer is happy to pay. It is my aim to understand the drivers for implementation and community engagement and then to determine how the current stove design meets the needs of the Community and where improvements can be made to increase the uptake of the stoves.

In parallel I am keen to explore replacement fuel technologies and try to foster a mindset change about the environmental future.