I wasn’t sure what to expect going to my first Becker Rose Cafe event, but I definitely did not expect us to start a conversation about how you buy a car and why we all don’t have a prius even though we know its a more environmentally friendly car.  But the discussion led to the fact that you can research a new car, and then test drive it and see if its for you.  You also have warranty on the car so that if it stops working due to manufacturers error then you can get a refund.  All these ways are to help people feel safer and more secure about making a massive purchase so that if anything goes wrong you don’t lose all the money you invested.

I thought it was really interesting when we applied all these ideas to selling stoves in Uganda.  Most people use these three stone oven to cook all their foods and the smoke inside their houses are very damaging to the lungs.  In addition to that the stoves they use also only use about 25% of the energy from the heat to cook and the rest is just lost to smoke.  Now you would think that by just telling people this information they would change immediately to something that was better for them but sadly that is not the case.  The most effective way to introduce people to new technology is to implement the same things that the car industry does like financing and risk reduction so that people can make a safe investment.  It’s saddening to know that people still live without some of the basic technologies that are viewed as necessities.

I don’t know what the best thing to do in this situation is but hopefully someone can figure out a way to help people be more open to changes like this to benefit their health and also just make their lives easier.  This was a very thought provoking lecture and it definitely left me with a better appreciation of all the things I take for granted.