Over two billion people in the world depend on stoves to cook their meals every day. The vast majority are based in developing countries.
18-year-old Richie O’Shea from Blarney, Co. Cork mixed engineering and scientific knowledge when he invented a biomass-fired cooking stove for use in developing countries, an efficient and near smoke-free cooking stove made from waste materials.
Innovations in applied learning in have grown, and one of the hallmarks of creative spaces in the ‘science’ calendar has been the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition, featuring over 400 projects by over 1,500 students annually.
As part of a special category Science for Development award, led by Self Help Africa’s development education unit and supported by Irish Aid, the prize encourages students across a broad range of science subjects to consider the challenges affecting people in the developing world, and present potential scientific solutions to these issues.
Richie O’Shea’s Biomass-fired cooking stove won the Science for Development Award, the overall winner of the BT Young Scientists which went on to win the Adene Special Prize at the EU Contest for Scientists.
Produced by: Richie O’Shea
Year: 2010
Courtesy of Dorothy Jacob and Self Help Africa
Irish Global Solidarity in 100 Objects is organised by developmenteducation.ie, an online hub focused on learning about the unequal and unjust shape of the world today, and is coordinated by Aidlink, Concern Worldwide, the Irish Development Education Association, the National Youth Council of Ireland, Self Help Africa, Trócaire and 80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better World.
DevelopmentEducation.ie is part funded by Irish Aid.
