Integrated School Project on Clean Cook Energy (INSPOCCE)

In Ghana, according to the WHO, over 13,000 deaths occur each year as a result of exposure to household air pollution (HAP) or indoor air pollution (IAP) and more than 21 million people are impacted by exposure to HAP each year.

To address Ghana's long-standing energy challenge and build on new opportunities for transforming the cooking sector, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves through World Education is implementing a pilot project dubbed, ‘Integrated School Project on Clean Cook Energy’ (INSPOCCE) in two communities (Kuntunse and Sapeiman) in the Ga West Municipal of the Greater Accra Region.

The project is educating students in junior secondary schools about the dangers of cooking over open fires and the existence of cleaner, more efficient solutions.

As part of this pilot project, the Alliance, through World Education, seeks to design and implement a curriculum that can be tested and evaluated against several outcomes, including: increased knowledge and positive attitudes toward clean cooking solutions, students’ learning and leadership skills, teacher and school administrator buy-in to the importance of teaching these topics, students’ families and communities awareness levels, and purchases of cleaner cooking solutions. By the end of the first year, the pilot project had trained 61 peer educators and more than 3,500 community members had been reached through radio, information vans, tech fairs, and community sensitization activities.

This project is not only raising awareness about the negative impacts of traditional cooking practices among Ghanaian youth, but also providing opportunities for girls and boys to be part of the change as their own households transition to cleaner cooking solutions and to enhance their leadership skills. World Education is working with the Ghana Education Service to include the newly developed clean cooking curriculum into the national junior secondary curriculum.