1. Project Background
Da Krong and Huong Hoa are mountainous districts located to the west of Quang Tri province. Van Kieu and Pa Co minority ethnic groups take up large proportion of the population here, and largely depend on agriculture, livestocks, and forestry production. Their livelihoods are challenging, with low per capita income and high poverty rate.
People still practice their traditional custom of using firewood as fuel and using open tripod stove that consumes fuel (8- 15% efficiency), emits CO2 and smog. Sometimes people have to travel long distance to fetch firewood, as wood is considered to balance CO2 better and has many advantages over commercial fuels, suitable for poor farmers, especially ethnic minorities.
New improved stoves have advantages such as reducing 30-50% firewood, reducing 30-35% cooking time, reducing 3-6 times CO2 and 70-90% smog emission.
Project ?Develop and transfer innovative energy-efficient cooking stoves? aims to help ethnic minority people achieve 30-50% fuel saving, reduce cooking time, improve living conditions, protect health, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, raise awareness on environmental protection, protect watershed forests and the environment at both regional and global levels.

2. Project Objectives
a. Overal Objective:
Protect the environment and forests through the development and transfer of innovative cooking stoves for ethnic minorities, raising awareness of environmental protection and improving the health of women and children. This will contribute to improve the livelihoods of ethnic minority people, save money and energy.
b. Specific Objectives:
Objective 1: Design, prototype and transfer production technology of innovative cooking stoves that are suitable for local conditions and customs.
Objective 2: Raise awareness on climate change adaptation and mitigation, as well as people?s awareness and responsibility in the protection of forests and their habitats.
Objective 3: Review, summarize experience for further replication.

3. Project Activities
- Initiatie project
- Form Project Steering Committee
- Develop work plan and project budget estimation
- Select and manage project contract
- Organize training activities to raise awareness for households participating in the project, and share project results
- Develop project model
- Track, monitor and evaluate project
- Complete project

4. Expected Results
- Formed Project Steering Committee and technical expert group.
- Organized 10 training courses to raise awareness for ethnic minority groups on environmental protection, watershed forest protection, reforestation and effective forest exploitation. Raised awareness of changing from low-efficient tripod stove to innovative efficient stove.
- Developed a model with 50 participated households, adjusted the design, produced 900 innovative stoves and transferred to people in the two districts.
- Advocated and shared project results within the two districts as well as throughout the province, to raise awareness on environmental and watershed forest protection.
- Support of local authorities and people during project implementation.