A woman in the Dominican Republic is visibly happy about her new solar oven, and the instruction she received on using it effectively.

While we continue to grieve the sudden passing of Christopher Sylvah, Solar Oven Partners must move forward in a search for a new executive director. We need your help in encouraging promising applicants. Please share this job announcement from the SOP website or from SOP Facebook as well as regional and national job listings. A Solar Oven Partners committee will review applications for persons with administrative and supervisory skills combined with passion for mission partnership for interviews. 

Solar Oven Partners Starts Search for Executive Director
Solar Oven Partners (SOP) is seeking a candidate with the necessary skill set, gifts and graces to fill the director's position. This vibrant international ministry of the Dakotas Conference, an Advance mission project, has a 24-year history of placing solar ovens in the hands of the poor, and empowering persons through training in solar cooking and water pasteurization. The director provides supervision, instruction, and leadership in all SOP operations, recruits and manages volunteers, leads Volunteer-in-Mission teams overseas and in the U.S., and works to expand and sustain the donor base. The position will remain open until the qualified and called candidate has been hired. Resumes will be reviewed as they are received. Upon hire, we will want the candidate to start as soon as feasible. Please submit application materials by September 30, 2024 to Allen Roll, Missional Impact Development Coach, Dakotas Annual Conference, 16647 81st Avenue North, Maple Grove, MN 55311 OR email application materials to Al Roll.  Additional questions about the position should be directed to Al Roll by phone. Learn more about SOP and access the Director’s Job Description, here. 

Until further arrangements are made, all email communications should now be directed to Advisory Board member Karen Workman via email here. For urgent administrative phone messages, call 701-214-2234.
Print communication and contributions should be directed to Solar Oven Partners, 1331 W. University Ave,  PO Box 460, Mitchell, SD 57301.

Our Solar Oven Partners in the Minnesota/Dakotas Conference, in The Dominican Republic, Sierra Leone and Four Corners Ministry-Navajo Nation resolve to continue this ministry with passion and dedication. 

Go to SOP Facebook for news about workshops and seminars. Information on the search for an executive director will be posted as soon as it is a available.

To read the latest about how you can help Solar Oven Partners mission through alternative gift-giving, see this recent news article filled with information and links to resources.

For 23 years, SOP has distributed more than 12,500 ovens to families who helped build and learned to use them. Demand for ovens has grown in the Dominican Republic and Sierra Leone. We are also developing a partnership with people of the Navajo Nation in Arizona and New Mexico.

Volunteers assembling solar oven parts in one of the workshops in the Dakotas.

Why Are Solar Ovens Needed?
For a third of humanity, a hot meal means cooking over an open fire. More than 40% of the population of the Dominican Republic live in poverty.  The women of the household are frequently balancing the purchase of cooking fuel against buying adequate and healthy food to feed the family.

Solar Ovens provide relief.  It is an economical way to cook food. Our solar ovens also pasteurize drinking water to help reduce life-threatening disease, such as diarrhea and dehydration. This helps to reduce the child- and infant-mortality rates resulting from water-borne diseases.

Cooking with charcoal, the traditional fuel in countries like the Dominican Republic, is unhealthy. Solar Ovens eliminate the air pollution from burning charcoal, which also reduces respiratory and eye disease, and dangerous burns among women and children who tend charcoal cooking fires.

How Can I Help?
Give the gift of a solar oven to a family in need. Costs of components and shipping for the high-quality ovens have topped $100. When added to the cost of the program’s two-day training seminars—an essential element in successfully placing an oven—the cost is approximately $150 per family.  Tax-deductible gifts of any size are important. You may make a one-time gift or a monthly contribution through the UMCOR link. 

Two options to donate:

• Write a check to: Solar Oven Partners/ Dakotas UMC Advance #637 and mail to: 

         Solar Oven Partners
         1331 W. University Ave.
         PO Box 460
         Mitchell, SD 57301

A student with her new oven in the Dominican Republic.

• Click here to donate online through The Advance

Volunteer:

• Serve on a Volunteers In Mission (ViM) team at your own expense to help with solar oven assembly and training for solar cooking.
• Volunteer to help fabricate oven components at our Montrose workshop or our reflector workshop at Rapid City, or help package oven boxes and other items for shipment at our centeral workshop in Raymond, SD

Where Can I Learn More?

• Get resources for giving a Solar Oven Alternative Gift at this link
• Like and follow Solar Oven Partners on Facebook for breaking news
• Visit the Solar Oven Partners web page for in-depth information

Lead the way—cook with the sun!