Climate Action Honduras Project #41366

Protect Vital Forests, Air, Health for Hondurans

by Trees Water & People

Protect Vital Forests, Air, Health for Hondurans

Project Report | Feb 3, 2026
Sustaining Income for Honduran Communities

By Daniela Bueso | TWP Mesoamerica Program Director

Local leaders promote the clean cookstove program

In 2025, Trees, Water and People (TWP) helped keep more than 150 people employed.

TWP knows that people can only sustain their territories if they can sustain their families. And like many of our programs, the clean cookstoves program in Honduras keeps this recognition central, investing in sustained benefits for local communities, economies, and environments.

In conventional clean cookstoves programs, large organizations often build stoves rapidly, attempting to reach a maximum number of stoves per dollar. But this approach misses the bigger vision of sustainability we are all working towards.

How are local people included in the process? Who will fix the stove if it breaks? And how will more stoves be built in the future?

At TWP, even more than building stoves, we focus on building systems – systems that ensure locals lead the process and have the capacity to carry it forward long into the future.

As an integral part of the clean cookstoves program, we’re collaborating with our local partner, AHDESA, to expand the Maestros Fogoneros network, which trains and equips local community members to establish their own small businesses as stove builders and repairers. Currently, 22 stove builders are participating in the program, significantly increasing their monthly income, and another 17 individuals are employed through the local design and fabrication of stove parts.

“The creation of small local businesses for the construction and sale of stoves continues to be a driver of employment and economic autonomy in local communities” – AHDESA, Honduras

In 2025, the Maestros Foganores network constructed 1,390 stoves within rural Honduran households.

That’s 1,390 families who aren’t breathing in smoke every time they cook a meal, saving hundreds of dollars a year on purchase of firewood. And that’s additional 39 families with a valuable new source of income.

That's thousands of trees still growing, and thousands of metric tons of carbon not emitted into the atmosphere.

That’s a win-win for people and the planet.

Stove part replacement sales boost economy.

Honduran families breathe easier with new stoves.

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Oct 8, 2025
Building Stoves, Empowering Women

By Daniela Bueso | TWP Mesoamerica Program Director

Stovebuilders are able to build stable income.

Trees, Water & People and its local Honduran partner, AHDESA, is on track this year to reach its annual goal of installing clean cookstoves for 2,000 underserved families throughout Honduras.

Each stove installation improves the health and air quality for families by 80% and reduces firewood consumption by 1,500 pounds annually. But the impact of these stoves go far beyond the families who receive them. This program employs a network of welders, brickmakers, sheet metal workers, and truck drivers, who now have steady income. Additionally, specifically for the stovebuilder training program, our aim is to make 40% of the recruits to be women.

The women master stovebuilders, or Maestras Fogoneras, are training and certifying alongside their male counterparts through the clean cookstove program. These women are redefining traditional economic roles, and for some, it is the first time their families have ever had a stable income.

One Maestra Fogonera works in very rural areas outside Olanchito, Honduras, sometimes traveling two hours by horse to reach the families she serves. “I love my job and seeing the joy it brings people when we finish the stove,” she says.

Another sees her role with an even wider lens. “When I started the process, I doubted myself,” she says. “Since I started in 2019 working as a Maestra Fogonera, I don’t feel doubts anymore.… Now there are more women who are trained, and there are more who want to be trained. I am going to include them so that they can learn, too.”

In 2025, 22 stovebuilders received training and certification, increasing our reach to communities and their continuing demand to install more stoves. We are so grateful to GlobalGiving donors for supporting improvements in air, forest, and family health for so many Hondurans, and for creating the opportunity for employment – especially for many women – to have steady income and improve their families’ lives.

Two Maestras Fogoneras receive certified training.

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Jun 13, 2025
Looking Back, Moving Forward

By Daniela Bueso | TWP Mesoamerica Program Director

TWP leader-in-training inspects stoves in Honduras

This month, our executive director, Sebastian, traveled to Honduras with his 13-year-old son to visit the people and places at the foundation of our clean cookstoves program. Sebastian started with TWP as an intern in Honduras more than 20 years ago, and has maintained close relationships with local partner, AHDESA, and with the communities who continue to lead the program. As TWP has grown over the past 27 years, the clean cooking program has expanded alongside it, and we’re always inspired by the impact it continues to create.

A key milestone of this expansion, we’ve recently supported AHDESA in formalizing an agreement for the Paraiso Verde project, which will benefit an additional 1,300 people in the department of El Paraiso. As well as supporting the construction of 250 additional stoves by local builders, the project will contribute to broader sustainability and community leadership efforts in the region. Paraiso Verde will align with the national-level goal of reducing firewood consumption, support sustainable management of nearly 100,000 hectares of forest, and promote coordination between local organizations, communities, governments, and technical entities. The project will also involve the recruitment and training of more women stove builders through the Maestros Fogoneros program.

While the region’s challenges have only grown more acute in the past several months against economic and political shifts, this program represents continued advancement towards sustainability, gender equity, and grassroots leadership. Amidst these challenges, it’s crucial we continue to invest in solutions that simultaneously address economies, wellbeing, and the environment, especially within communities that are particularly vulnerable.

And while so much has changed in Honduras over the past 20 years, some things haven’t. We continue to find our local partners and friends working relentlessly to improve conditions for their communities. We continue to see the stove program expand to reach more and more families, under local guidance and leadership. And we continue to see the impact of a stove design championed by the inspiring woman who started it all, Doña Justa.

TWP is immensely grateful to the communities who started this program with us decades ago, and to the GlobalGiving community for helping to ensure it continues long into the future.

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