Craig Gutowski is the founder of The Foundry, a stove and barbecue distributor in Ontario, Canada. Last year Craig approached StoveTeam with the idea that the stores he works with could invite their customers to donate a stove through StoveTeam along with each of their purchases. The idea took off immediately, and last year The Foundry raised enough money to provide over 250 stoves, which are now being manufactured in Guatemala and Nicaragua! Here is Craig’s story.
“Stovies Help StoveTeam”
You could call me a Stovie. Since 1976 I have been involved in the sales of woodstoves in Ontario Canada. When I handed the reins of the family business over to my son a few years ago, I did some adventure travel to Nepal and Tanzania. I was struck to see firsthand the prevalence of open fire cooking and the obvious detrimental effects on the people and their environment.
After these travels, I looked into the global problem of open fire cooking and was astounded by the enormity of the health and social implications. But equally astounding to an old Stovie, was that woodstoves are the answer to one of the world's largest problems. Suddenly, my lifelong profession had a whole lot more stature (at least in my eyes).
There are dozens of clean burning cookstove projects around the world, and I set about trying to figure out which organization had the best model for making a difference. As a frugal business person, I knew I did not want to support a top heavy organization geared for photo ops. I reached out to the people at Aprovecho Research, who have been at the forefront of the rocket stove technology that is incorporated in all clean burning cookstove designs. They highly recommended that I contact Nancy Hughes at StoveTeam.
Craig (center) participating in a festival during a trip to Guatemala.
Unlike the other organizations that I had tried to contact by leaving messages or talking to receptionists, Nancy picked up my call on the second ring. Turns out she is the founder and the driving force behind StoveTeam. We had a chat about StoveTeam. I loved the entrepreneurial model of starting locally owned factories, using local labor, and local materials. I loved that the stove was tailored to local needs, affordable, portable, and not given away for free. Nancy invited me to sign up for the March 2019 StoveTeam Trip to Antigua Guatemala and I jumped on it.
Up to that point, my interest in StoveTeam was the personal goal of getting involved in something to give back. But after a couple of days working at the factory in Guatemala, it struck me what a perfect fit StoveTeam would be for other businesses like my own across North America. I invited Nancy to come up to our annual meeting of Ontario hearth dealers and give a presentation on StoveTeam. It was very well received and we signed up a number of hearth retailers to support our StoveTeam program.
The program enabled the customers of our dealers to donate a StoveTeam Ecocina stove for half its cost. Our local dealers, the Foundry, and our partners at ICC Chimney shared the cost of the other half. This cost sharing made a donation very affordable for all involved.
We kicked the program off with a Mothers Day Challenge. The week before Mothers Day, we challenged our dealers, friends, and family to donate 100 stoves by Mothers Day. To our surprise we got 150! It was a perfect gift for mothers who wanted to help out less fortunate mothers in Central America.
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.
StoveTeam founder Nancy Hughes (left) and Craig (second from left) meet with city officials to discuss the distribution of stoves.
This year we are working on partnering with our industry association, the Hearth, Patio, and BBQ Association. That could give us the opportunity to have StoveTeam programs throughout North American hearth dealers. Stovies that have focused on providing comfort to their local communities can now play a part to solve one of the world's largest problems....open fire cooking.
Families in Jinotega, Nicaragua receiving just a few of the stoves made possible by the Foundry collaboration.
I hope our experience can serve as a catalyst for others who might want to involve their personal or business networks in a StoveTeam program.
StoveTeam’s relationship with The Foundry is just getting started! This year we have even bigger plans to expand this partnership to the entire hearth industry across North America!
Do you have an idea for a partnership with StoveTeam? Let us know!