SHELBY, Ohio – Ken Ekegren, assistant professor of engineering at North Central State College, has been to Malawi, Africa, four times to aid orphans and their caregivers in the Kanyenyeva area.
His fifth visit will be slightly different, however. Three NCSC students will join him to improve the design of clean cook stoves used in Malawi.
Designing and testing various types of cook stoves for the poor African country is something Ekegren has implemented in his engineering classes for some time. The students’ designs previously have been taken to Malawi to be used.
Because of his role in providing relief to the people of Malawi, Ekegren has been awarded a $15,000 grant from the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s People, Prosperity, and Planet program for an improved cook-stove design that will be used in Malawi.
“One of the aspects of the grant was specifically earmarked for cook stoves, which we have worked on before,” Ekegren said. “Other students a couple years ago in 2012 designed some cook stoves, and I took over the designs and had our villagers make them.”
Ekegren and the three NCSC students will travel to the South African country between the college’s fall and spring semesters for the project.
The energy-efficient stoves will be assembled using materials available to the people of Malawi.
“This grant is basically an extension of that to improve those cook stoves in both the manufacturing process and also to lighten up the insulation so they can be transported,” he said.
One of the goals is to make the stoves light enough for Malawians to take to market and sell.
Upon returning from Africa, Ekegren and the students will be invited in May to Washington D.C. to present their work, competing for an additional award of up to $75,000.
“These students, who are working on this particular project, are College-NOW students,” Ekegren said. “College-NOW students are high school students who are here at the Kehoe Center for their junior and senior years and will get their associate’s degree in electro-mechanical engineering.”
The students will get their degree a week before graduating high school, according to Ekegren, who has been a professor at NCSC for more than 20 years.
The stoves, which are affectionately known as rocket stoves, are comprised of a five-gallon steel bucket with an elbow flue made from tiles. Insulation, such as ash, surround the stove to produce a better, more-efficient fire – much like a fireplace, Ekegren said.
By using these stoves, villagers have told Ekegren that wood, which is a scarce resource in Malawi, lasts at least twice as long or longer. Ekegren added that people in Malawi have to walk a mile to gather wood.
“It’s also faster,” Ekegren said. “One woman last time I was there said that it was the first time she could make porridge for her kids before school – in the fact that it took less time to get the water boiling.”
In 2009, Ken and his wife, Penny, traveled to the country as part of a mission trip supported by their church, First English Lutheran, located at 53 Park Ave. West in Mansfield.
“Our church about 10 years ago got a letter from a gentleman in Malawi (Shadreck Chikoti) who was looking for help during a drought that they had,” Ekegren said. “He sent out about 50 letters to help the village, and we were the only ones who responded. So our church helped out financially to get them through that drought – that was in 2004 or 2005.”
In 2007, First English Lutheran Church raised enough money to bring Chikoti to Ohio to talk to various churches and to visit. Two years later, the church decided to send a team to Malawi for a mission trip, Ekegren said.
Interest from other churches caused the group from First English Lutheran in 2012 to form the Malawi Orphan Care Project. It’s a nonprofit organization that could act as an umbrella for other members to join.
“That year we sent members from our church and also from a church up in Minnesota.”
Since then, Ekegren said the Malawi Orphan Care Project includes five churches from the United States and one in Canada.
“Between our church and the other churches now, we’ve raised enough money over the last five-plus years to build a building on the site – basically an orphan project that had property is how it started,” he said. “We built a building about a 20-by-50 foot building from money donated from Bob Enskat.”
Among the many projects Ekegren and the nonprofit organization have worked on in Malawi include: drilling a well, providing lawn lights and solar lamps, and constructing an outdoor kitchen.
“We built a two-burner brick stove, which my students designed here, and I took the design over,” he said. “So now they have shelter and a storage room.”
Furthermore, as the church sends money to Malawi for sheet steel so the buckets can be made, the villagers started to make the stoves for other caregivers in the village.
One of the biggest aspects of the Malawi Orphan Care Project is its feeding program, which fed around 150 orphan children in Malawi two times a week in 2009. Ekegren said that number has grown to 400 children four times a week.
To raise money for “the hungry season,” which starts next month in Malawi and lasts until the next crop, First English Lutheran will have a pie festival from 1 to 5 p.m. Oct. 11 in the parking lot at the corner of Mulberry Street and Park Avenue West.
Because of rain and flooding, Ekegren said Malawi’s crops are down by 30 percent this year.
“They anticipate having much less food, so we’re raising money now, in addition, to increase our feedings to six days a week for the children and caregivers, and also to supply corn flour to the caregivers,” Ekegren said.
According to its website, the Malawi Orphan Care Project works in partnership with community leaders in Malawi to address the physical, spiritual, economic and relational needs of the orphans and their caregivers.
Currently the only agency the nonprofit works with is the Kanyenyeva Orphan Care Ministry.
For information on the Malawi Orphan Care Project or to donate, visit malawiorphancareproject.org.
