[Stoves] Cleaning up on cleaned Dung

[Richard Stanley]

Andrew,

Tried to upgrade the title abit:  Do you think it will stand at Stanford now ?  

To the point, though, its a great idea they evolved --for the start up of the process --the missing part is agreed, how to continue it on a sustaining basis,  donor involvement or no…

We focus on what others cannot do along the line of introducing a new technology. 
In that regard, one could forecast  something like the following continuum;
1. Development of production capacity, then  
2) sales and marketing capacity, 
3) and training capacity,
 and finally, 
4) networking and policy promotion national awareness national association capacity (whether formal or informal) . 

We're pretty much focussed in the general  between developing training capacity and marketing and networking capacity-- in most locations,   the impending exception being a rather intensive direct effort to launch a brand new program in mezo America at the moment. 

With each step comes a way to monetise it: 
• training producers who then produce briquettes and the machines and sell them locally,
•  training trainers  amongst the interested and more articulate and creative of the producers--who again learn to sell their training services. 
  • Marketing types often enter stage left here, to promote the product over larger areas with their own commission arrangements,

Next  its about  building networking capacity from amongst the more connected training teams, the support of whom comes from the good donors development institutions  (could also evolve to a national association of briquette producers, such as is evolving in Kenya and Tanzania and Uganda now. However, it will be some time before one sees such supporting directly networking and lobby efforts without external support. 

It all hinged on the 'sellability' of the briquette. Thats why we spend some time tying to really acertain its economic social environmental, etc., viability before we dive in-and we are still not batting much better than a 70% success  rate (=local producer trainer teams are self sufficient after a year on), quite frankly. 
 
Although admittedly tangent to the serious thrust of the more technical participants on the stoves biofuels list, this idea of really looking hard at sellability of the product,  is an  important one to raise periodically. Its not only the simle idea of selling something at a price but discivering how it can be accepted as part of the culture. That in turn begets   need for  development of hte product with and not for the so called beneficiary ---as participant in the process.   

 In trying to reach a large population with a new idea it needs to become part of their own culture. They need to own it. They need to have had sufficient input, as to how it will look, feel and work in their culture, as to be confident and eager to take it on. This transferrance is essential in the overall process and it is the least understood on the mentioned lists…

So I continue to be a polite if long winded thorn, if you will, cleaning the sticky dung of development. 

Aluta continua,

Richard Stanley
www.legacyfound.org

On Mar 20, 2012, at 9:29 PM, Andrew C. Parker wrote:

Richard and Crispin,

First, I would like to point out that while I am interested in your tangent, I am not sure that future generations will take note, given the title. ;-)

Second, many years ago at an Overseas Development Network Conference at Stanford, one of the presenters proposed that an effective method for development would be to start up a business, train workers, take the brightest and most aggressive of them and fire them, or otherwise encourage them to leave, so they will start up competing businesses, then let your own business die away quietly and take your leave.

I never saw a study done.  I suppose, other than the risk of bodily harm, it might be a viable strategy, but how would you sell it to a donor?


Andrew Parker

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