Haitian Leaders in Haiti Solar Oven Partners travel the Dakotas
CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE ENTIRE SCHEDULE. Please check for the stop closest to you and make it a point to meet the Josephs.
BROOKINGS, SOUTH DAKOTA -- Montas Joseph, Haitian director of the Haiti Solar Oven Partners (HSOP), and Raymonde Joseph, HSOP training director, will visit 25 communities in the Dakotas during September 2013.
The Josephs will also visit HSOP workshops in Moffit, ND, on Saturday, Sept. 14; Volga, SD, on Friday, Sept. 20, and the Dakotas Marketplace mission festival at First United Methodist Church in Sioux Falls on Saturday, Sept. 21. The public is invited.
The Josephs are employed by Haiti Solar Oven Partners, a Brookings, SD-based mission of the Dakotas Conference of the United Methodist Church. Founded 14 years ago, HSOP is directed by missionary Rick Jost.
Today, hundreds of volunteers fabricate and package solar oven parts in the Volga and Moffit workshops, preparing them for shipment to Haiti.
Teams of volunteers, under the direction of Jost, travel to Haiti each year to live in
communities that have invited them. For 10 days, these volunteers work with Haitians to build ovens and educate people about solar cooking under the direction of the Josephs.
The project has shipped about 7,000 ovens over the years. However, due to increasing demand and acceptance of solar cooking, Haitian partners have asked HSOP to double the number of ovens shipped annually to 2,280 in 2013 and beyond.
The poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti struggles with environmental depredation as a result of massive deforestation created by the use of charcoal for 95 percent of the cooking done in Haiti. Cooking over charcoal fires causes respiratory and eye problems for women and children and robs the meager food budgets of many families.
Cooking, baking, purifying water and pasteurizing milk with a $125 solar oven offers a Haitian family practical and sustainable self-help in a country of staggering poverty. Donations from individuals and churches cover the majority of the costs of the ovens.
Jost is enthused about the Joseph’s visit. “People in many of our churches have met Haiti Solar Oven volunteers, and have read our mission materials,” said Jost. “But there’s no substitute for meeting and hearing our Haitian partners who work on the front line of this ministry.”
