Project Report
| May 14, 2019
30 stoves on the way!
By Kimberly Lagomarsino | Director of Programs, Latin America
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Our HRI team, volunteers and beneficiary families are working together to deliver and install 30 new Safe, Energy Efficient Cookstoves right now! They are using all their effort to move these stoves up mountains to remote, difficult to access communities where families live in extreme poverty and isolation.
These stoves continue our mission to combat chronic respiratory illness, frequent burn injury and unsustainable deforestation caused by dangerous and inefficient open fire cookstoves that are common in rural Guatemala. We are excited to continue our work with Estufas Chispa and educate families on maximizing the benefits and lifespan of their cookstoves.
By the end of the week, 30 families will not only have a brand new stove with a chimney in their homes – they will be breathing clean air and using significantly less firewood. We also anticipate significant long-term positive impact on the health and well-being of communities, families and especially mothers and young children who spend the majority of their day in the home.
Thank you for being a part of this journey with us. We look forward to sharing more in the coming weeks.
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Feb 11, 2019
Shifting Focus Back to Homes
By Kimberly Lagomarsino | Director of Programs, Latin America
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It's a new year and we have hit the ground running working to make more Safe, Energy Efficient Cookstoves a reality for families in Guatemala.
Last year we focused our stove efforts on schools. You helped us to ensure that schools participating in HRI school feeding programs had proper stoves to more safely and efficiently cook for large numbers of children every day. We were able to accomplish this by introducing a stove design from Estufas Chispa and we had overwhelmingly positive feedback and excitement for these stoves from local moms volunteering in the school kitchens. This year we are shifting our focus back to homes. Families will now benefit from Estufas Chispa wood-fueled cookstoves, specifically built for the Guatemalan home setting.
Thanks to your generosity, Stefani is already helping us to test the Estufas Chispa home stove model in her home. Stefani is the mom of young children who spend most of their day in the home and she understands the importance of making a change for her their current and future health. It took her no time to start using her new stove like a pro and there is absolutely no excess smoke in her home now! We are thrilled to have her regular feedback on the functionality, the efficiency, the taste of the food and much more as we gear up to install more stoves for families like hers.
We are preparing for a big year of progress delivering more stoves to families in need and helping to make homes safer, healthier places to live and grow. YOU are an integral part of our success. We appreciate your first-time or continued support of this work to improve the situation for more families just like Stefani's.
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Nov 13, 2018
Marking 6 years!
By Kimberly Lagomarsino | Director of Programs, Latin America
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2018 is winding down and we are feeling grateful for your confidence in us as we continue to do critical work.
We have learned and accomplished a lot over the past 6 years working to bring safer, more energy efficient stoves to those in need. Our solution has evolved through consistent evaluation and user feedback in Guatemala. This past year we decided to change up the stove design, partnering with Guatemalan-based stove manufacturer, Estufas Chispa, to ensure the best design for the families and schools who participate in our program. This year we also decided to prioritize improving school kitchen conditions for volunteer moms and the babies who sometimes need to accompany their moms while they cook. We did this because most school kitchens in rural Guatemala still use open fire cookstoves and suffer from the same effects as households - serious health and safety hazards as well as inefficient wood consumption. All of this can be avoided with a safer stove.
So far in 2018, your support helped us to:
- Install 8 new stoves, designed specifically for school use.
- Create safer working conditions for more than 50 volunteer mothers.
- Cut school kitchen wood consumption by more than half.
- Educate more than 500 students, teachers and parents about the serious effects of smoke inhalation.
- Lay a strong foundation to implement Estufas Chispa stoves in homes.
There is still time to do more this year! As you consider your end of year giving, we hope that you will help us continue our efforts to save lives and improve health and well-being of those in need. Our progress depends on your generosity.
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