Hello StoveTeam supporters,
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 our wonderful staff.
We started helping local entrepreneurs build stove factories in 2007 by assisting Gustavo Peña to start his successful factory in El Salvador.
We then continued working in Honduras with Anibal Murcia where volunteers field-tested the Ecocina stove.
Gustavo Peña, owner of StoveTeam’s partner factory in El Salvador.
The families in San Jose de las Lagrimas where we worked had NO water, and there were NO toilets and there was little work. In a squatters’ camp like this, everyone was at risk for acute respiratory infection. There still are villages such as this throughout the world.
The first home 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 3:30am and returned four hours later after cutting and carrying home 77 pounds of firewood. He and Maria Louisa stayed in their home all day, and smoke filled the tiny room. Santiago had no energy left to work, and Maria Luisa 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 still 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.
You, our volunteers and supporters had no experience with factory work or stove building, and many of you were over 60, but we all worked hard and have made a significant difference.
Thank you all for your help and for making a difference.
Nancy Hughes with some of the team who helped design the Ecocina cookstove.
Now, I have both complete confidence and enormous pleasure in passing StoveTeam along to new leadership.
Shelby Kardas and Doña Rosa, who received the first cookstove produced by StoveTeam in Guatemala.
Shelby Kardas is our new Executive Director. Some of you have met Shelby already. She joined StoveTeam last September to lead our fundraising efforts. She has a lengthy history as a non-profit leader spanning over 20 years. For 10 years she worked as Vice President, Administration & Development at the World Oregon, a prominent international education organization in Portland. She left World Oregon to follow her passion and build a fundraising and strategic planning consulting practice where for five years she helped numerous small to large-size non-profits grow and thrive.
Prior to joining StoveTeam, she lived in Cuenca, Ecuador for one year with her husband and high school daughter where they volunteered and studied Spanish. Shelby also lived and worked in multiple cities in France for a period of five years in the late 90’s and speaks fluent French. Shelby received an MBA from Thunderbird, School of Global Management and a BA with a double major in Political Science and French from Portland State University.
Shelby shepherded StoveTeam through these unsettled months of the pandemic as Interim Executive Director, and through it all has galvanized the staff and proven to be a strategic, capable, and innovative leader.
I am also very pleased to announce that Kim Forrest has been named the new Chair of the Board of Directors. Kim joined StoveTeam’s Board in 2018 after serving on staff as the organization's Programs and Volunteer Manager for two years. Prior to joining StoveTeam, Kim had been living, working, and studying Anthropology and Archaeology in Guatemala and Mexico since 2009, through which she developed an interest in helping solve the social and environmental challenges facing Latin American communities. During her time working at StoveTeam, she worked with StoveTeam factories and supporters on business development, grant writing, research, and volunteer trips. She currently works professionally as the Marketing Director for her family's company in Eugene, FORREST Technical Coatings. Kim holds a B.A. in History from Whitman College and a Masters in Anthropological Studies of Mexico and Mesoamerica from the Universidad de las Americas-Puebla (UDLAP) in Mexico.
Under this new direction, I have every confidence that StoveTeam will continue to grow and thrive, and I am very excited to see what the future holds.
Thank you again for being part of Stove TEAM. We couldn’t have done it all without you!
Sincerely,
Nancy Hughes,
Founder, StoveTeam International
