We send everyone our deep gratitude for helping us help others realize this important work which save time, lungs, and forests.
Dear Friends,
Just a note to let you all know that your effort to support women in rural Nicaragua with fuel-efficient cookstoves has been a success. As of last Friday, February 11th, 2022, all thirty of the fuel-efficient stoves were installed and this week, the women who received this support are already telling us how very happy they are with this addition to their homes.
The fuel-efficient stove initiative has become part of an agroecology program supported by our small non-profit, Artists for Soup. Our central focus depends on Nicaraguan agroecologists leading the way teaching workshops for rural women on how to grow biodiverse food on small plots of land. Over the period of three to six months, women create fenced-in, deeply-excavated, organic family gardens in an effort to stabilize and enrich family diets, and sometimes, these gardens create a bit of income too because of surplus crops. In addition to workshops on garden development, we focus on healthy food preparation, seed-saving, compost making and nutritional tree cultivation. Focus on the environment is part of each workshop we organize. The locally-made, fuel-efficient stoves provide both a teaching focus for us at our demonstration center, and later, an actual shift in practice for families away from commonly-used open-fire cooking, which requires a much larger amount of firewood and has devastating health consequences over time.
The fuel-efficient stoves help make rural women’s lives more manageable by reducing the amount of time they must spend searching for firewood and providing them with more time for gardening and other activities. In addition, fuel-efficient stoves pipe smoke out of the house, which is very important in terms of protecting respiratory health of children and other family members.
Mother and children with new fuel-efficient stove
cooking corn on a fuel-efficient stove
beans and rice on a fuel-efficient stove
fuel-efficient stove delivery to rural community outside Matagalpa, Nicaragua
During a challenging time when it’s difficult to know what excellent projects to support, Artists for Soup appreciates the fact that you selected this project which contributes to improving living conditions for rural women in Nicaragua. In the upcoming year, we will continue to reach out from our center in El Corozo, near Matagalpa to new communities in Quebrachal, Zarzal, Las Jaguas, El Jicaro and Cerro Grande and Carlos Canales (Leon), Nicaragua. We always begin with creating fenced-in family gardens but after a family has dedicated themselves to the process of growing food, we try to promote adaptation of fuel-efficient stoves.
We send everyone our deep gratitude for helping us help others realize this important work which save time, lungs, and forests.
Sincerely,
Judith Nichols, Director of Artists for Soup
e-mail: artistsforsoup@gmail. com
14 February 2022