Building cooking stoves: A new initiative to reduce firewood use and save trees

If you’ve kept a fire burning in your home for an entire day, you’ll know just how much wood it consumes. Now imagine cooking every single meal that way. In Malawi, most families rely entirely on open fires for cooking — there is no gas or electricity.

The problem is that open fires are extremely inefficient. They burn huge amounts of firewood, and that wood has to come from somewhere.

Across Malawi, the effects are devastating. Trees are being cut down at alarming rates, including fruit-producing mango trees that could otherwise provide both food and income. It’s heartbreaking to witness.

This challenge has had serious consequences for children. In some urban areas, school feeding programmes have had to stop because of the sheer amount of firewood required. Yet in rural areas, these programmes are absolutely vital.

Many children arrive at school without having eaten breakfast, and the impact is obvious. After long school holidays, when feeding programmes pause, children often return noticeably leaner. At Hope Secondary School and the primary schools that we support, these meals are not a luxury — they are essential.

So, what can be done?

One effective solution is using fuel-efficient stoves. Built simply from brick, mud, and cement, these stoves consume up to one-third less wood than open fires. While the materials are affordable, the initial cost and lack of awareness have slowed adoption.

We aim to expand this stove programme to all the families we support — including sponsored students, Youth Development Programme families, and the wider community — and to empower them to teach others how to build these stoves, too.

Alongside this, we are working closely with communities to highlight the importance of trees: replanting, protecting fruit trees, and understanding their long-term value. Through our skills centre, we maintain a woodlot and a tree nursery, growing seedlings from seed and teaching families how to propagate and sell trees locally.

We’re also supporting farmers to improve crop yields. Many families work hard in their fields, yet harvest less than they invest. By improving farming practices and reducing waste, families can become more productive, leading to better livelihoods and a higher standard of living.

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Can you help a child in Malawi?

Thanks to the support of our partners, sponsors, fundraisers and volunteers, Hope4Malawi's Youth Development programmes, building projects, resourcing initiatives, and student sponsorships continue to provide life-changing opportunities for children in rural Blantyre.

Contact us for further information on how to get involved.