The holiday season is a time of celebration, a time for festive gatherings, special meals, and family togetherness.  In the midst of holiday shopping, travel and preparations for visits from family members, people take an extra moment to be kinder, more grateful, more compassionate and generous towards those who are in need of help.

During the month of December 2016, Project Gaia reached out to the Gettysburg community with two fundraisers to benefit the refugee camps of Jijiga, Ethiopia: a sale of scarves woven by the women of the Former Women Fuel Wood Carriers Association (FWFCA) held on the campus of Gettysburg College and co-sponsored the The Refugee Action Committee (RAC) and Students Against Sexual Assault (SASA) and a holiday postcard mailing.

The Project Gaia team wishes to extend grateful thanks for the wonderful response to both these fundraisers. As a result of the response from the Gettysburg College and local community, Project Gaia will be able to provide 140 stoves to refugee families in the Kebribeyah, Sheder and Awbare Refugee Camps in eastern Ethiopia near the Somali border — the need there is truly staggering. The refugee camps in Ethiopia are home to more than 821,000 men, women and children and that number continues to grow.

Since 2005, Project Gaia has distributed more than 7,000 clean cookstoves and over three million liters of ethanol providing a clean, safe and sustainable method of cooking. With the help of kind and generous supporters like our friends in the Gettysburg community and elsewhere, we will continue our work to provide safe and clean energy to families everywhere.