As you know, we are a TEAM, and I am just the face you see instead of the hundreds of volunteers, an extremely committed Board of Directors, and Sanya, our one employee. The award is theirs.
We started helping local entrepreneurs to build stove factories four years ago by assisting Gustavo Peña who now owns his own factory in El Salvador, and who has not only produced thousands of fuel-efficient stoves but has employed 15 individuals, educated his children, and established local scholarships.
I returned two weeks ago from Honduras where I worked with a new factory owner Anibal Murcia and the volunteers field-testing the Ecocina stove.
On the morning of my departure, I received a call from Sanya who had already arrived. “Nancy” she said, “There are five in the village who have been hospitalized for tuberculosis. Should we still go?”
The families in San Jose de las Lagrimas have lived where there has been NO water, and there are NO toilets and little work. In a squatters’ camp such as this, everyone is at risk for acute respiratory infection, and there are villages such as this one throughout the world.
The first house I visited was ten by twelve. There were tree trunks at each of four corners, black plastic and old plastic bags for walls, and inside was a smoky open fire and a makeshift bed. Santiago had left the house at 3:30 am and returned four hours later after cutting and carrying home 77 pounds of firewood. He and Maria Louisa stayed in the home all day, and smoke filled the tiny room. Santiago had no energy left to work, and Maria Louisa was too ill to stand. The two of them lived that day on ten tortillas.
This is the story of only one family in the village, but there were others - men, women, children, babies, living in smoke.
Much of the world lives like this. There are mothers with babies on their backs, and the smoke from their cooking fires will kill both them and their children, while the surrounding forests become denuded.
The problem is so preventable and the solution so inexpensive and so simple.
Before we received the support from the Purpose Prize we helped local people start six factories in five countries in four years, reducing pollution and deforestation and improving the lives of over 90,000. None of us had any experience with factory work or stove building, and all of us were over 60 but we worked hard, and have made a significant difference.
Now the recognition and money from The Purpose Prize will help us start more factories to give employment to local people to produce safe, inexpensive, fuel-efficient Ecocina stoves, both saving lives and reducing pollution, and protecting the forest. The demand is there, and the solution is simple.
Thank you all for your help in making a difference.
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