From Fuel to Pot: an interdisciplinary partnership to address the role of solid fuel use in food preparation in the household in Kenya and Malawi

In this project, we want to understand why people in slums and settlements in Kenya and Malawi cook using solid fuel like wood, charcoal, coal and animal dung, given that it is bad for their health, so that we can develop interventions to improve the situation. This is a key aspect of the food system because more than 3 billion people in the world cook with solid fuels, since they are often the only fuel available or the only one they can afford. The people most affected are poor people in those slums and settlements who cannot afford to connect to the grid for their cooking needs, and live in crowded spaces with limited ventilation for cooking. 3.8 million deaths every year in the world happen due to household air pollution (HAP) and it is also responsible for 50% of pneumonia deaths in children under 5. This is because children often stay close to their mothers when they cook. Getting fuel - e.g., picking large bundles of wood- also risk damaging their growing bodies and takes young people away from schooling and socialising. Women and girls are particularly affected as they are the people in the household who usually collect fuel ( e.g. wood) for cooking and also those who cook in most low income countries. Most studies to date have introduced improved cookstoves ( stoves that require less wood or charcoal) to reduce solid fuel use, but often interventions fail because they do not take into account the fact that cooking on solid fuel is a complex issue related to the accepted behaviours and beliefs within the local community, culture and community histories. This project will fill this gap through building an interdisciplinary Partnership across the UK, Kenya and Malawi. With this Partnership of community members, government representatives, NGOs, traditional leaders, we will identify which aspects of cooking on solid fuels are most important to local communities and where some changes can be made to improve people's well being and health. We will carry these activities:

ACTIVITY 1 focuses on learning from each other within the Team and training to local research assistants in Kenya and Malawi on the various research methods to be used in Activity 2. We will also meet with Chiefs and community representatives of the two target communities for Activity 2 (i.e. Mukuru slum (Nairobi, Kenya) and Ndirande informal settlement (Blantyre, Malawi)). We will hold partnership building events to discuss the issues with relevant stakeholders: government representatives, policy makers, local chiefs, religious leaders, academics and NGOs.

ACTIVITY 2 will use various research methods to understand the beliefs and experiences of the 'fuel to pot' in Mukuru and Ndirande. The various methods include using photos and walking interviews to capture daily cooking experiences, measuring air pollution while cooking and 'dots' photography, which uses dots of lights on photos to show the smoke concentration produced while cooking and how it can damage your health.

During ACTIVITY 3 the data gathered in Activity 2 will be summarised and fed back to the community members of Mukuru and Ndirande, through various techniques to show data in a more visual way ( where people are less literate) and stimulate further discussion, such as pop-up exhibitions of posters/drawings made by local artists, videos, dots photography. Relevant stakeholders identified in Activity 1 will also be invited to share and participate in the discussions in Activity 3.

ACTIVITY 4 consists of partnership meetings in Kenya and Malawi to discuss, with relevant stakeholders identified in Activity 1 and any new ones, the findings and next steps to design interventions, together with the informal settlements communities, to address the most urgent aspects related to cooking with solid fuel usage.

This will lead to the partnership applying for other funding to develop and pilot the intervention in Kenya and Malawi to improve the lives of those communities.

This project will consist of multidisciplinary research and engagement to explore the challenges and priorities of households in informal settlements regarding food preparation using solid fuels, with the aim of developing contextualised interventions. It will have Societal, and Academic impacts.
SOCIETAL IMPACT on communities involved in the Mukuru slum (Nairobi, Kenya) and in Ndirande informal settlement (Blantyre, Malawi). In Activity 1, we will meet with community representatives and chiefs to help guide the implementation of our planned activities. In Activity 2 we will recruit participants in both communities to hear their lived experiences of the 'fuel to pot journey' and measure potential HAP exposure in their homes from cooking food on solid fuel. We will integrate what community members tell us and visualise the data gathered to present it back to them for feedback and discussion in Activity 3. The impact of this activity will be in starting a discussion with the community on their priorities with regards to cooking on solid fuels, leading to the co-production of intervention ideas. To measure our impact we will measure participation in the activities and conduct focus group discussions to gain feedback on the methods we used, we will measure attendance at community events and Partnership meetings, and record the levels of engagement from community members.
SOCIETAL IMPACT on potential partners and stakeholders in Kenya and Malawi. Throughout the Project, we will grow and strengthen the Partnership by engaging with a wide range of stakeholders, from government representatives and policy makers to traditional and religious leaders, donors, academics and civil society organisations. We will invite those to Partnership building events in Activity 1 and to engage in our community-based events in Activity 3, so they can partake in the discussion with community members and understand their priorities. In Activity 4 we will invite them to further Partnership events alongside community representatives to seek their input and renewed commitment to the Partnership's future work (including further funding applications). We will keep stakeholders informed through regular bulletins between events. To measure our impact, we will record the participation of stakeholders in the Partnership's activities, chart the Partnership growth over the life of the project, record the level of engagement via email and social media throughout and log any indirect impact on policy formulation, and advocacy.
ACADEMIC IMPACT through capacity building. In Activity 1 we will use team wide peer-training and knowledge exchange regarding the methods to be used in the project. In Activity 2 we will build the capacity of Research Assistants (RAs) and Team to collect and analyse data gathered through a variety of innovative mixed methods. In Activity 3 we will maximise impact through learning, testing and sharing data visualization techniques (pop-up exhibitions of posters/ drawings made by local artists, photovoice and HAP photos, videos). Our direct impact will be visible if the two RAs trained continue to work in the subject area beyond the project's lifetime and if the co-applicants are able to utilise their new knowledge to inform their practice going forward. We will measure this by conducting a small impact survey within our team at the end of the project.
ACADEMIC IMPACT through dissemination and communication to wider audiences. We will use the Team, Project Advisory Group and Partnership's extensive networks to disseminate the outputs. Team members will present findings at key Conferences and meetings. We will use social media, websites and open access publishing mechanisms (e.g. the Conversation) to engage with wider global audiences. To measure of our impact success we will monitor the number of website hits, article downloads, location of visitors and social media statistics, statistics including Altmetric for our academic outputs.