The Baking Soda Prjoect

The Baking Soda Project is an organization dedicated to reducing the burden of house fires and the severe burns caused by said fires in underserved countries. Burns are uniquely caused by unattended charcoal cooking stoves that initiate fully involved house fires. Cooking most often occurs inside the homes in rural Haiti, and

it is common for the stove to have some remaining charcoal embers after food preparation is complete. When these embers are left unattended, sheets, clothes, curtains or other flammable objects ignite and start fires that spread rapidly. In a developed country this would not be a regularly fatal problem, because in addition to running water and widely available kitchen fire extinguishers, the fire department would show up to rescue trapped victims and extinguish the fire. In third world countries like Haiti, however, the lack of running water and absence of organized fire departments in many areas leaves a large population of people at an extremely high risk for suffering fatal burns. One of the many benefits of baking soda is its ability to extinguish small grease and non-grease fires. One of the major goals of this organization is to make baking soda available to people in third world countries. The baking soda will be packaged with instructions describing how to pour a small amount on their charcoal embers after cooking, hopefully resulting in a significant reduction in the incidence of deadly house fires and severe burns. Depending on how hot the stove is, the baking soda may even allow for some of the charcoal to be reused, saving these underserved people the cost of buying more fuel. In emergency situations the baking soda can be used to extinguish small fires that have ignited while the victims are in the act of cooking, preventing what would have otherwise been an all too common tragedy.

The true mission of The Baking Soda Project is to provide elegant, affordable and sustainable solutions to combat fires and burns in underserved countries. The distribution of baking soda comprises only one such solution to this problem. In the future we would like to distribute refillable, water based, hand-pump fire extinguishers to citizens and support the training of small volunteer fire brigades with more advanced fire-fighting capabilities.