Patricia Chinyama (pictured above) has five children and spends half of her day tending to her crops. She lives in a small village in Malawi.

Like many other women in her village, Patricia attended United Purpose's training programme where she learnt how to produce and sell fuel-efficient cook-stoves.

“Before I started making stoves, life was very hard, especially finding enough food and money,” says Patricia. “Some of the children had to drop out of school and, because of lack of food and clothes, we also had frequent outbreaks of disease.”

Now that her stove business is thriving, life is very different for Patricia and her family.

“Now we are so happy and we never dreamed that the support United Purpose gave us would take us this far,” she says.

Through our cook-stoves project in Malawi, we train people like Patricia to use local materials to make eco-friendly cook-stoves. The stoves save carbon, as they use 60-80% less firewood than traditional open fires. The environmental good is quantifiable and converted into Gold Standard carbon credits. Organisations in the UK and beyond can buy these carbon credits to offset their unavoidable carbon emissions - and enables UP to continue to grow the support we provide. Find out more about our carbon initiative here.