We continue our “Smoke: The Flavor of Guatemala” Story Series with a story recounted by our champion in the hearth industry, Craig Gutowski.

After traveling in Nepal and Tanzania, I looked into the global problem of open-fire cooking and was astounded by the enormity of the health and social implications. I reached out to the people at Aprovecho Research, and they highly recommended that I contact Nancy Hughes at StoveTeam International. Nancy invited me to sign up for the March 2019 StoveTeam Trip to Antigua Guatemala and I jumped on it.
I invited Nancy to come up to our annual meeting of Ontario, Canada hearth dealers and give a presentation on StoveTeam International. It was very well received and we signed up a number of hearth retailers to support our StoveTeam International program. The program enabled the customers of our dealers to donate a StoveTeam International Ecocina stove for half its cost. Our local dealers, the Foundry, and our partners at ICC Chimney shared the cost of the other half.
Over the course of the year we had a handful of dealers who strongly supported the program. One of our dealers donated more than 70 stoves, and by the year end we had a grand total of 270! That is enough to transform the lives of a couple Guatemalan villages.
On this increasingly connected planet, I believe the time has come for the hearth industry to take a small part on the world stage. I hope our experience can serve as a catalyst for others who might want to involve their personal or business networks in a StoveTeam International program.
— Craig Gutowski, The Foundry, Ontario, Canada

Craig championed StoveTeam International and worked hard to introduce StoveTeam to his colleagues in the hearth industry and in 2020 the HPBA, Hearth, Patio, Barbecue Association of North America, and HPBA-Canada, adopted StoveTeam International as a Charity of Choice. In 2022, hearth industry partners came together and sponsored 1,000 Justa stoves for families living in rural regions of Guatemala. Our efforts continue in 2023 as HPBA & HPBAC’s 2023 Charity of Choice, we have once again challenged the hearth industry to sponsor 1,000 Justa Cookstoves for Guatemala.

You can find more stories from our supporters in “Smoke: The Flavor of Guatemala”.