El Salvador Update
April 23, 2008
If you had been with me in December, and you were here with me now, you would know it is a miracle! When our team of eight volunteers arrived on the 6th of December we encounted a bright, dedicated Salvadoreno and a house with a nearly empty and overgrown back yard. Some of the land had been cleared by a team of oxen and a shelter of corrugated metal had been erected to protect the people Gustavo had hired to make some prototype stoves.
Gustavo proceeded to introduce us to the Vice Minister of the Environment, Directors of FIAES, Habitat for Humanity and others. We spent a busy week planning how to increase factory production and give incentives and directions as to how to improve the stove design.
We returned in March with a team of 29 volunteers to see what we could do to help. The team gave stove demonstrations in the community, helped start the construction of a brick wall to protect the factory site, and build a desk, a few workbenches, and expand the covered area in the yard. The team members returned home satisfied that they had been the start of a grand experiment to help someone in El Salvador start his own business, others to gain employment, and many to receive stoves that would not only improve their health but help with the problem of deforestation and pollution.
Yesterday, when Don Steely and I returned to the factory site we were absolutely blown away! The factory with a large StoveTeam International sign out front was up and running with 10 permanent employees, a number of temporary employees, and an enormously expanded facility. This all happened in less than 5 weeks! There is now an office, nicely painted and with pretty curtains, where there is a computer expert, a secretary, and someone to receive payments and distribute the stoves. The tools have been individually photographed and inventoried by date received. There are official invoices for the stoves and there are banking procedures in place.
Out in the yard the work area has been expanded to twice the size, and there is a work area covered by blue tarps where two women are filling the stove bodies with pumice and finishing the tops. Each employee has his or her own designated tools and many of the tools have been re-designed or custom designed to make the job easier. The stove body is not only cut with a plasma cutter, but one of the employees designed a stand with a ring magnet to hold the steel in place to make cutting easier. The bead roller has been attached to a post to make the job of finishing the edge easier. Tools for bending the parilla have been designed and produced by Gustavo. The employees have been divided into teams working together to make all of the jobs more efficient. A ten year old boy comes each morning to clean the site in return for having his school fees paid by Gustavo.
Production is up from 100 per month to 1,000 per month in five weeks, and there is still room for additional workers. Each employee wears protective equipment, fans have been installed, respirators put into use, and painting is now only done on Saturdays to keep fumes from contaminating the others.
Don and I met with attorneys and accountants yesterday and will be making decisions this week as to how to proceed. In the meantime we have had meetings with various governmental and non-governmental organizations who are increasingly more interested in our project. Yesterday the members of San Salvador Rotary came to the factory and were also so impressed they are having a special meeting to see about redesigning their program to help. The governmental organization in charge of bettering the lives of women took all of our information and they hope to include the stoves in their house production program. And, to top it off, last night we received a call asking for another 4,000 stoves!
Today we are meeting with another Rotary Club from Santa Ana, visiting a bi-lingual CPA, checking out hotels and transportation for future volunteers.
Tomorrow is the CARE demonstration to prepare for the Warren Buffett delegation. Warren will not be coming in late May, but will be sending an advance team to check out the site where CARE is working. It is five hours across El Salvador from the capital and is supposed to be the hotest area of the country. We'll be ready to go at 5am and happy to show off our stoves.
In addition, we will be stopping to investigate two potential sites for factories in that area and will return to San Salvador to pick up Marco Tulio from the bus station so he can work with us in the factory in Sonsonate and decide if he wants to work with us in Guatemala.
The three days spent in Guatemala were extremely productive as we now have two or three people from there who are interested in starting factories, and one will be here on Friday. Also, I met with a film crew there that is interested in producing a documentary on our project. We have possibilites of much more publicity, but our attorneys have advised us to wait until we get our legal processes in place before doing too much, so we have cancelled today's television appearance and put it off until early June when we return.
So all is well with StoveTeam International and Don is busy tweaking some last minute changes to the latest stove model. Martin, our fabulous Peace Corps Volunteer, is contemplating spending a couple of years working with us in a special project funded by the government. hey would pay all of his expenses if he decided to stay. We would be more than thrilled to have him!
When the next group arrives in late May, we will not only be working with stoves and the factory site or sites, but will be bringing a mobile dental unit, provided by the Rotary Club of Irvine Spectrum and Dental Care for Children, to go out into the villages on weekends to do dental care. We have one dentist here and one from the USA to start the project and our local dentist is contacting others to help. We're more than off and running…and we're hoping you can come and join us soon. Our next scheduled trip is in November 2008. Please come!
Nancy -
Gustavo proceeded to introduce us to the Vice Minister of the Environment, Directors of FIAES, Habitat for Humanity and others. We spent a busy week planning how to increase factory production and give incentives and directions as to how to improve the stove design.
Don and I met with attorneys and accountants yesterday and will be making decisions this week as to how to proceed. In the meantime we have had meetings with various governmental and non-governmental organizations who are increasingly more interested in our project. Yesterday the members of San Salvador Rotary came to the factory and were also so impressed they are having a special meeting to see about redesigning their program to help. The governmental organization in charge of bettering the lives of women took all of our information and they hope to include the stoves in their house production program. And, to top it off, last night we received a call asking for another 4,000 stoves!
Today we are meeting with another Rotary Club from Santa Ana, visiting a bi-lingual CPA, checking out hotels and transportation for future volunteers.
In addition, we will be stopping to investigate two potential sites for factories in that area and will return to San Salvador to pick up Marco Tulio from the bus station so he can work with us in the factory in Sonsonate and decide if he wants to work with us in Guatemala.
The three days spent in Guatemala were extremely productive as we now have two or three people from there who are interested in starting factories, and one will be here on Friday. Also, I met with a film crew there that is interested in producing a documentary on our project. We have possibilites of much more publicity, but our attorneys have advised us to wait until we get our legal processes in place before doing too much, so we have cancelled today's television appearance and put it off until early June when we return.
When the next group arrives in late May, we will not only be working with stoves and the factory site or sites, but will be bringing a mobile dental unit, provided by the Rotary Club of Irvine Spectrum and Dental Care for Children, to go out into the villages on weekends to do dental care. We have one dentist here and one from the USA to start the project and our local dentist is contacting others to help. We're more than off and running…and we're hoping you can come and join us soon. Our next scheduled trip is in November 2008. Please come!
Nancy -