We believe that every mother in the world deserves access to clean cookstoves that reduce deadly indoor air pollution in the home and decrease deforestation in the local community.
On this Mother’s Day, we hope for healthy homes and healthy families through increased access to cookstoves in the developing world. Cooking shouldn’t kill!
To learn more please visit www.treeswaterpeople.org
About this photo
A woman bundles firewood that she just finished chopping in Tiquisate, Guatemala. The firewood will be used to cook the next couple days of meals for her family.
Around the world, 3 billion people still cook ever meal over an open fire. In Guatemala alone, more than 70% of the population is dependent on wood to cook every meal. And, gathering fuelwood is no easy task – a task that most often falls on the women and girls who cook for their families.
This International Women’s Day, we want to honor the billions of women and girls around the world who struggle each day with energy poverty. We hope for a future where every woman can safely prepare a meal for their family without having to worry about collecting fuelwood, breathing in toxic smoke, or having their young children burned. Cooking shouldn’t kill!
Learn more about how we are fighting energy poverty at our website.
Photo credit: Don Usner 2009
TWP and Asociación de Forestería Comunitaria de Guatemala Ut’z Che’ build clean cookstoves in rural, indigenous communities of Guatemala. Each cookstove greatly reduces deadly indoor air pollution and uses up to 70% less fuelwood than a traditional open fire. Because cooking shouldn’t kill!
Thank you to all the generous supporters who helped make 2012 a success! To learn more about our International Programs please visit www.treeswaterpeople.org.
According to new global burden of disease estimates published in The Lancet, household air pollution (HAP) from cooking with solid fuels, such as wood, dung, coal, and charcoal, kills 4 million people annually. These findings double the previous known mortality rates of HAP from 2 million (WHO 2009) to 4 million deaths worldwide.
Everyday, approximately 3 billion people around the world depend on solid fuels for cooking meals and heating homes. Cooking over an open fire fills kitchens with smoke that contains dangerous levels of particulates and carbon monoxide. This heavy exposure has been likened to smoking five packs of cigarettes a day. Breathing the toxic smoke from open cooking fires can lead to acute respiratory illness, pneumonia, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
The Global Burden of Disease 2010 study represents the work of 486 co-authors from 50 countries, an effort led by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Gloabl Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (GACC) is a public-private partnership led by the United Nations Foundation to save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women, and protect the environment by creating a thriving global market for clean and efficient household cooking solutions.
“This shocking doubling of previous estimates of HAP-related mortality necessitates a redoubling of Alliance efforts to ensure that cooking a meal is a life-enriching, and not life-taking, activity for all people,” said Alliance Executive Director Radha Muthiah.
Trees, Water & People (TWP) has worked with GACC as an implementing organization since 2010, when the Alliance was created. In the past 15 years, TWP has built more than 50,000 clean cookstoves throughout Central America and Haiti in an effort to address the environmental, economic, and human health issues caused by open-fire cooking and HAP.
More information about the new global burden of disease study please visit the GACC website.
Our partnership with the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas (ECPA) supported the construction of 600 clean cookstoves in Honduras and El Salvador in 2012. Thank you ECPA!
We wish you a happy holiday season and a wonderful New Year! We can’t thank you enough, our dear friends and generous donors, for your continued support in 2012. Your caring made this an exceptional year! Please consider making an end-of-year donation so we can continue to help communities fight energy poverty and protect their natural resources in 2013.
To make your end-of-year contribution please click here.
In partnership with Cloud 9 Adventures and their non-profit arm, Positive Legacy, Trees, Water & People is providing festival goers in the Caribbean with opportunities to engage in meaningful social and environmental projects throughout the region. During the first annual Strings and Sol bluegrass festival, over 25 people from the festival joined us at the Amanecer Learning Community – a new K-8 school near Tulum that provides alternative education involving knowledge of local culture, environment, yoga, arts, and theater in combination with the standard academic curriculum. Volunteers donated school supplies and digital cameras to the students, and were able to help in the construction of a clean cookstove, plus paint several murals around the school as the children presented us songs and dances they had prepared. This partnership with the Amanecer Learning Community is in its earliest stages, and we look forward to watching it grow and flourish over the years. Thanks to everyone who came out to support this project!
Three billion people around the world still cook every meal over an open, smoky fire. This leads to two million deaths every year, mostly among women and children. Clean cookstoves replace open fires, greatly reducing indoor air pollution and deforestation in developing countries. Cooking shouldn’t kill! (Photo: A mother and her child with their new Justa clean cookstove in Honduras.)
We recently received this beautiful letter from Sara Gale, a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in the rural village of Rio Abajo, El Salvador, who we trained to build clean cookstoves as part of our partnership with the Peace Corps and the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas. This letter is a reminder of how important our work is to families who live each day in a state of energy poverty, with no access to basic energy. We are honored to work with Sara and all the other PCVs who are dedicating years of their life in service to others. Thank you, Sara!
Dear Trees, Water & People,
On behalf of my community in rural El Salvador I want to thank you all for your amazing and generous work. We enjoyed having Sebastian, Elliot, and Ken visit in August. I believe that they saw how in love the families are with their Estufas Justas! The work that you guys do to design, monitor and re-design is so valuable to so many people of the world. Although I see the stove as perfect now, I’m certain with your help it will be even closer to perfection in the years to come. Thank you for making this work your life passion; it was obvious by the enthusiasm, expertise and experience of Sebastian in improved cookstoves that my community of Río Abajo is in great hands with Trees, Water & People. Although my end of service is in March of the coming year I hope to extend in my site a year longer to be able to monitor the 41 stoves in my project and hopefully build 60 more in a second phase in the coming months. We are currently working on getting replacement planchas up in the community, as that thickness of sheet metal isn’t sold anywhere near here. I’m looking forward to continuing my work here for an extra year and to seeing how each household continues to care for and appreciate their Estufa Justa.
¡Gracias de Corazon!
Sara Gale y Los Miembros de Río Abajo
