A Midlands accountancy firm is not cooking with gas but instead offering a ‘ray of light’ to a peace building organisation’s latest project.
Harrison, Beale & Owen (HB&O), which has offices in Leamington Spa and Coventry, is backing Cord’s ‘Cooking Up Peace’ campaign to raise funds to distribute solar cookers to refugees in Africa.
The international charity, which is based in Leamington Spa, is rolling out the project to provide a further 9,000 cookers in Chad after the success of a pilot project in 2010 which saw around 4,000 solar cookers distributed to families who have fled from Darfur.
HB&O has worked closely with Cord for the past four years after acting as the charity’s auditors. The firm chose Cord as its charity of the year in 2010 and, in a further show of support, HB&O is donating £500 towards the project.
Rob Kendall, managing director at HB&O, said: “We’re delighted to be supporting Cord once again.
“The charity does some fantastic work across Africa and Asia, with people who are rebuilding their lives after conflict, which we know all about after supporting the organisation for many years.
“The ‘Cooking Up Peace’ initiative is a tremendous project which will reach hundreds of people who desperately need help and as soon as Cord told us they were extending the project we were more than pleased to get on board and do our bit to help out.
“The solar cooker campaign also ties in well with our green ethos of doing everything we can to protect the environment, such as operating paperless offices and using electronic billing for example wherever possible.”
Kit Lawry, from Cord, which works with around 120,000 people across Africa, said the project will make a massive difference to refugees and local communities in Chad.
“Each solar cooker costs around £40, which includes the materials to make it locally, training for families who use them and distribute them to others,” she said.
“Research has found that women in Chad can spend up to ten hours a week looking for fire wood to cook with, which not only puts them at great risk of physical attack but can also lead to tension between refugees and local Chadians with whom they are sharing this vital resource.
“By providing solar cookers we can make a massive difference to the lives of refugees and help create peace within and between communities.
“We would like to scale up this project and take the cookers to people outside the refugee camps if we can attract funding.
“Harrison Beale and Owen have been great supporters of our work, and we delighted they are backing us once again.”
