A Cooking Contest to Create Awareness

Part of Dharmalife’s mission is to rally social change in villages through activation and involvement. Just pushing for usage of clean cookstoves as the healthier option, doesn't work against the age-old comfort and convenience of using mud stoves. However these mud stoves and the bio fuel used are a deadly health hazard, targeting women and children.

To fight this danger, we changed the way we presented the clean cookstoves. We conceptualised Dharma Chef - MasterChef like cooking competitions in the village where the women used the clean cooking stoves to cook up new and exciting dishes and came into the limelight – an empowering change from the darkness of their kitchen.

The contests are conducted with the community as the audience and the village leadership as judges, showing the benefits of clean cooking, hygiene and nutrition, rather than just talking about them! The approach led to increased awareness and adoption, where many campaigns had failed.