Last week a lady called Gillian visited our tailors. Gillian is from the UK and is a retired science teacher. Both her and her husband have visited Uganda a number of times over the last couple of years. Originally they came over as teachers but have since developed their own sponsorship programme as well as doing other bits and pieces of community development. Gillian’s aim of her latest visit to Uganda is to visit different communities and show people how to make fireless bags.

A "fireless cooker" uses stored heat to cook food over a long period of time. The food is cooked on a traditional stove, before it’s transferred to the fireless cooker. A simple basket, insulated with local resources such as banana leaves or old clothes, can reduce fuel use by 40%, preserving scarce food and saving people hours of precious time.

As part of the Subbii and Epoh Solar project is to make fireless baskets and after hearing about Gillian’s even better idea of a fireless bag we thought it would be a good idea for her to visit Light Gives Heat and offer a demonstration to our tailors.

This proved a great success! The bags take much less time to make as well as costing a lot less. Practically the bags are much better too as they weigh a lot less and can be stored or packed away a lot easier. Since the demonstration our tailor have taken the bag home and tried it out. The reports have been amazing. Thanks to Gillian our tailors can now start making the fireless bags and start selling them to make an income.

Gillian’s website is www.beads4books.co.uk if you want to find out more about what else she is doing.