Grace and Joseph live in a small thatched hut at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. Every day, Grace cooks rice, maize and porridge meals three times a day over an open fire inside her hut with her children. Grace also walks several miles every 3-5 days to look for and gather firewood to keep her open fire going in her family’s smoke-filled hut.

This is a familiar story for the families in East Africa. Women face death every day just to sustain their families. Facing danger to collect enough fire wood, they are depleting their natural resources and their incomes. Additionally, families are being exposed to toxic smoke that often results in respiratory or other diseases and harms the environment.

Take a look at this brief video that describes some of the struggles faced by African women using traditional cooking methods.

They not only face a painful time on earth, but 2 million people of an unreached people group reside in East Africa—facing an eternity of pain.

East-West has heard the cry of these desperate people, and we’re responding with a new humanitarian venture called The Flame Project.

The Flame Project is a community development initiative that uses high-efficiency cook stoves to improve the quality of the rural poor. This unique opportunity creates sustainable social, economic, and environmental value within developing world communities.

In addition, it offers East-West partners a unique access point into some of the world’s most unreached areas . . . reaching the lost with the gospel for the first time.

Grace and Joseph have had a stove for eight months and are seeing the benefits. The stove’s design allows Grace to only burn wood for 15 minutes for each meal because of the heat that radiates from the ceramic liner. As a result, less smoke fills her hut, she spends less time cooking and being away from her children, and she only has to look for wood once every three weeks.

Follow-up visits, gave our East-West stove distributor a chance to share the gospel with Grace and Joseph. Now Joseph distributes stoves to communities and families in need and shares the gospel of grace that he came to believe because of this holistic ministry.

A radical initiative, the Flame Project is providing a holistic solution for both physical needs as well as the eternal salvation of the unreached in East Africa.

Read more about East-West’s latest humanitarian aid project and how it’s creating a sustainable, holistic solution to the plight of East African families on the Flame Project’s website: www.TheFlameProject.org.