AHF Project: Tulin, Nepal

In partnership with another organization, AHF has helped bring solar power and smokeless stoves to the remote village of Tulin in the Humla district. This way, villagers no longer need to rely on open fires inside their homes for light, heat, and cooking. The health benefits are profound, and the kids now have light to read and study by.

From the AHF web site...

Tulin Village, Humla, Nepal

Anyone trekking to Mount Kailash from the Nepal side will probably walk through Tulin, a small village of some 250 Humlis about three hours from Simikot airport in far northwestern Nepal.

Short on land, on food and resources the people of Tulin have used wood from the nearby pine forests to cook their meals and light and warm their homes, creating an indoor haze of smoke and soot which led to chronic eye infections and respiratory problems. Tulin also had no sewage system and difficult access to fresh drinking water, which has created some serious health problems. But that has all changed.

Partnering with the ISIS Foundation and a brilliant and dedicated Swiss engineer Alex Zahnd and his local team, the American Himalayan Foundation set out to improve the lives of the people of Tulin.

The villagers were given the materials needed to build their own pit latrines. Once this was done, there were able to buy, at a heavily subsidized price, a fuel efficient smokeless stove especially designed by Alex. WLED lights were also set up in their homes, powered by a solar PV system that generates enough power to light the village for eight hours every evening, and a drinking water system was built, bringing clean water to three shared taps in the village. They also helped the village build a greenhouse.
Solar panels in placeEquipment that isn’t maintained isn’t useful, so the team started informal education classes. Nearly all of the adults are illiterate, so they hit on the idea of using modified instruction manuals as the syllabus.

The result? No more burning eyes, no more chest infections, less carting of wood, better sanitation, clean drinking water, a greater variety of nutritious vegetables, and an improvement in basic literacy skills!
(Both photos copyright American Himalayan Foundation, used with permission)