By Daniela Bueso | TWP Mesoamerica Program Director
Trees, Water & People (TWP) has worked for 26 years with our community partner, AHDESA, on a flagship clean cookstove program in Honduras. So far, in 2024, supporters through GlobalGiving have contributed to helping our teams to install 500 cookstoves; our intention is to complete more than 3,000 installations this year. But the work of this clean cookstove program means so much more because of the people it impacts the most: women.
The women in Honduras — most notably those in low-income or rural regions — very often cook on open-air stoves in their homes, creating poor air quality, increasing women’s health concerns, depleting regional forests of wood, and increasing exposure for families who use cooking as a means of needed supplementary income. The stoves that TWP developed with our local partners will reduce particulates in the air for a single-family home by as much as 95%, improving the health of all family members, but even more so that of women who spend the majority of their days working and cooking in the home.
Even more remarkable, the clean cookstove program this year has trained a total of 24 new stove builders, or Maestros Fogoneros, including 14 women and 10 men. These certified specialists are establishing their own service-trade businesses, building stoves for underserved families all over the country, and will play a crucial role in transforming fuel usage in the country, reducing dependence on firewood, enhancing air quality, promoting gender equity, and positively impacting Honduran families. This program creates yet another viable economic path for women in a traditionally male-dominated industry.
TWP is so grateful for the GlobalGiving community for its continued support of this program that lifts up the women of this region, to give them clean cooking environments, provide for them some supplementary income through cooking, and overall improve their livelihoods with successful, long-term business opportunities. Thank you!
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