Social Entrepreneur: Conscious Companies | Benefit Corporations | Impact Investing

Social entrepreneurship came early to Tom Osborn. When Tom was 17 years old, his mother became ill with a severe lung infection. This is not an uncommon experience for those who cook indoor with firewood and charcoal. 18,000 people in Kenya die annually due to the effects of cook stove smoke. According to the World Health Organization: Around 3 billion people cook and heat their homes using open fires and simple stoves burning biomass (wood, animal dung and crop waste) and coal. Over 4 million people die prematurely from illness attributable to the household air pollution from cooking with solid fuels. More than 50% of premature deaths due to pneumonia among children under 5 are caused by the particulate matter (soot) inhaled from household air pollution. This makes in-home air pollution from cooking and heating to be the third highest cause of death behind alcoholism and tuberculosis. Cooking and heating with biomass is also destroying the forests of the world. Every year Kenya loses 50,000 hectares of for