A Cleaner Way to Cook:How Global Leaders Primary School Is Cooking Cleaner with Biogas
Our model School, Global Leaders Primary, continues to evolve in ways we could never have imagined when we established it ten years ago, thanks to the dedicated passion of our entire Far Away Friends Community, our Advocates, our donors and our partners.
This June, the school reached an exciting milestone in our strategy for long term sustainability: the completion of the Global Leaders Biogas System. Today our kitchen is being powered with clean, renewable energy made from cow dung instead of firewood.
The Problem We Set Out to Solve
Preparing three hot meals every single day for our 600 students is a massive operation. Recently, it had also become an unsustainable one.
For years, we did it the way most schools in the region do: by burning firewood to heat our cooking stoves. But that reliance came at a cost. Firewood use was accelerating deforestation in the surrounding area, and inside the kitchen, our cooks faced daily smoke exposure, a real and constant health risk.
With climate change concerns growing globally, we knew we needed a climate-smart solution. After meeting with a young Ugandan-American chemical engineering student from Northeastern University, Dhwani Bhatt, we learned about a project she had done at a school in western Uganda where cow dung could be used to produce natural gas for school stoves. Together with Dhwani’s guidance, we were able to design The Global Leaders Biogas Project, a solution rooted in sustainable use of renewable resources available to us right at school.
Dhwani’s project at Sadhguru School in Western Uganda, which was a big inspiration for our project at Global Leaders Primary School, was aimed to spark students' interest in clean energy technologies. We are also walking a similar path. Our project is aimed to be a practical demonstration of climate action in practice, to our students at Global Leaders Primary School.
Turning Local Waste Into Local Power
One of the most interesting things about this project is that it is rooted in the realities of the local neighboring community around our school. In Namasale, where the school is located, many families raise cattle, an important part of Ugandan culture. Cow dung, which was previously considered waste, when processed correctly can now become a valuable energy resource.
Through our biogas system, cow dung is converted into clean energy in underground processing domes that can be used for cooking, eliminating the school's dependence on firewood and lowering its environmental impact. We believe that the most effective climate solutions are those that draw on local knowledge, local resources, and a shared commitment to sustainability.
What It Means for Our Kitchen and Our Students
The transition to biogas has been a significant shift in the lives of both our kitchen staff and students.
For our kitchen staff, the change has been immediate: cooks now prepare meals in a smoke-free kitchen for the first time in the school's 10-year history.
For our students, the biogas system has become part of daily life and daily learning. They pass it every day, and in doing so, they see a working example of how climate action and chemical engineering can work together to create new solutions to old challenges. This project has demonstrated to our students how switching from firewood to biogas protects forests, turns organic waste into usable energy, and proves that a community can build a more sustainable future with what it already has.
Together we can go further
We want to thank our friends at Brisk Farms for their hard work on the construction of this project, our angel donor, Mrs. S.C. from Colorado who funded this dream, and the Far Away Friends Community, our donors, and our partners, whose support turned this project from an idea into a working system that will help continue feeding 600 students every day.
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Important Disclosure: Far Away Friends is a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and, under U.S. law, does not support or oppose political candidates or parties in any country. Collines Angwech’s candidacy for Member of Parliament was undertaken entirely in her personal capacity and is separate from her role with Far Away Friends. No Far Away Friends funds, staff time, or organizational resources were used to support or influence this campaign. The views expressed in this article reflect the personal experience of the author and do not constitute a political endorsement by Far Away Friends.