Empowering youth to become the climate activists of tomorrow through hands-on experiences.

2050kids worked with scouts, schools and nonprofit organizations in the Bay Area of California to test drive The Cookstove Challenge.

Students at the Marin City Conscious Kitchen Community Garden at Martin Luther King Academy and The New Village School in Sausalito were initial participants in 2050kids Cookstove first challenges, using infographics to build the biochar producing cookstove. The infographics use universal symbols and images to guide individuals through the processes of building, assembling, and using the cookstove.

The Challenge was the initiating step informing the release of open sourced infographics to launch our Biochar Cookstove project to communities around the world which are most threatened by climate change.

Participants report back on each of these four phases:

• preparing to build the cookstove
• exploring the role of biochar in positively impacting climate change and food security
• using the cookstove to produce biochar
• utilizing biochar in community gardens and monitoring the results

Students at the Marin City location constructed a cookstove in two hours and performed their first burn in April. They also used organic biochar compost donated by WM EarthCare Landscape Center in two garden beds and will be testing how the biochar enhanced compost impacts growing time and crop yields.

West Marin Compost participated in the challenge, providing biochar to participants to augment the quantities produced by their cookstoves so students can test the impacts of biochar when it is added to compost used in garden plots.

Partners