Our Mission

To put a better fireplace into the heart of every home

Two girls with thier fire for life stoves

Fire for Life

An Escea Not-For-Profit Project

Escea’s purpose is to create better fireplaces. Whether that’s a fireplace in your home here in New Zealand, or cooking fires in the developing world.

We’re also committed to solving problems in innovative ways. And one problem we couldn’t ignore was that of open fire cooking in developing countries – unsafe, unhealthy and inefficient, and affecting millions of families each day.

So, we set out to do our bit to help solve these issues the way Escea knows best – by making better fires.

“Making innovative fireplaces is at the core of everything we do. So, when we saw an opportunity to improve the lives of people who only have an open fire to cook on, it was a no-brainer for us to get involved.”

 Nigel Bamford, Escea Fireplace Company Founder

Fire for Life – The Beginning

Designed specifically to tackle the problem of open fire cooking in developing countries, we created the Fire for Life Cooking Stove - a portable light-weight cooking stove that can easily be moved around, is simple to light, keep burning, requires less fuel and burns cleaner.

learn more about fire for life

Umm Asmaa’s Story

Umm Asmaa lives in a Syrian displacement camp with her husband and three daughters. Life in the camp is difficult enough without the challenges of open fire cooking. With the help of relief aid in 2021, Umm and her family were one of the first recipients of a Fire for Life cooking stove.

read more

Want to buy one, and donate two more?

Buy a Fire for Life Cooking Stove for yourself, and we’ll donate two more to families in need.

Buy one, donate two

Want to donate directly to ReliefAid?

Help support ReliefAid’s team in the field by donating via their Give a Little page.

Donate now

Fire for Life on TVNZ

We recently caught up with the team at New Zealand’s TV1 News to tell them all about Fire for Life.

Watch this clip to learn more about the project, the cooking stoves and how they’re making a difference to displaced families in Syria.