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The Sobre La Roca business consists of the promotion, training for use, micro-credit and sales of solar cookers, energy efficient stoves and hot pots for rural and urban marginal dwellers of the Altiplano and mountain areas of Bolivia. Traveling from village to village, entrepreneur Ruth Graciela Saavedra de Whitfield hosts educational seminars for women on the benefits of cooking with solar energy. These benefits include decreased fuel costs, increase in the nutritional value of food and the positive impact on the environment.  

The Need

For low-income women in the rural and mountainous regions of Bolivia, cooking involves a great deal of drudgery and expense. Forced to either spend large portions of the day collecting firewood or to spend substantial portions of their income purchasing it, many Bolivian women are beholden to the cycle of cooking. Sobre La Roca’s renewable energy and energy efficient cooking products free time and money in Bolivia while decreasing indoor air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions.

E+Co Value Added

E+Co Investment Officer, Gonzalo Rico Calderon, assisted the company in its business registration and provided training in basic bookkeeping and accounting. In 2005, E+Co loaned Sobre La Roca $20,000 to increase the scale of its operations and to fund micro-loans to prospective buyers of solar cookers. To date, the company has sold 1,500 solar cookers and educated more than 2,400 women on the benefits of solar energy.