KILNS Fund

KILNS Fund is designed to help poor rural entrepreneur/manufacturers in the Kakamega Forest region of Kenya to substantially increase the manufacturing and marketing of super efficient fuel stoves.  These stoves--known as "quick stoves" are ingenious and affordable designs made of readily available local clay that burn less 40% less wood than a traditional cooking fires.  

By providing microloans to improve the stove production facilities, KILNS Fund seeks to increase employment for villagers living near the Kakamega Forest, help conserve the remarkable Kakamega rainforest, reduce carbon emissions, reduce smoke inhalation from cooking fires, and help create conditions that will entice local rural youth to live in their home region rather than migrate to cities where many of them will end up living in urban squatter slums.

KILNS Fund works directly with a cutting edge organization on the ground in Kenya called Eco2librium, a group dedicated to saving forests and reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.  Together they helped establish a community-based organization, KILNS Kenya, that makes micro loans using money provided by KILNS Fund.  A producing group must complete a detailed loan application that includes a business plan and a repayment plan in order to be considered for such a loan.  One group recently received training in developing a business plan, making high quality stoves, techniques of kiln firing, and how to manage their business.  This group built a large kiln with money borrowed from KILNS Kenya.  A kiln construction expert from another successful stove-making group oversaw construction of this kiln.  Now the group aims to shorten the repayment period so that it can qualify for another loan to build a covered workshop.  Other projects are in the pipeline.  The projects Kilns Fund supports do "real and permanent good" to quote Andrew Carnegie.

Claudia Damon, KILNS Fund project director, is a retired attorney from New Hampshire who became captivated by the challenges of local villagers living near the Kakamega forest while visiting her sister, a biology professor at Columbia University, who has been conducting research in the Kakamega forest for many years. After lengthy conversations with local groups already making and selling quick stoves, she realized she could make an important contribution by helping them develop their manufacturing capabilities and scale up their businesses.

Visions Made Viable is delighted to serve Claudia and her partners in Kenya through fiscal sponsorship, administrative services and consulting.

You can make a tax deductible contribution to KILNS Fund by using the 'Donate' button below, or you can send a check payable to 'KILNS Fund' to:

Visions Made Viable
17595 Harvard Ave.
Suite C235
Irvine, CA  92614

Be sure to save the email you receive from PayPal as your receipt. Contributions made to or for KILNS Fund are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law. KILNS Fund and its fiscal sponsor, Visions Made Viable, provide no goods or services for your contribution.