Our Mission
For more than 20 years, Marine View Presbyterian Church (MVPC) has sent teams of volunteers to help Guatemalan residents living in remote villages. Seven years ago we began installing high-efficiency stoves.
Fires inside Guatemalan homes
For generations, Guatemalan families built open fires inside their homes for cooking daily meals. These open fires are rarely ventilated, making smoke a constant indoor hazard. Breathing the smoke leads to respiratory illness, reduced capacity to earn a living, burn injuries and shortened lifespan.
Maintaining these open fires requires a lot of wood due to their inefficiency. This causes many families to spend a significant amount of time and energy gathering wood and leads to severe deforestation of the local environment. Deforestation leads to more time spent to gather wood as well as excessive erosion. The current situation is a self-perpetuating, destructive cycle.
Benefits of stoves
To reverse this cycle, Hands for Peacemaking Foundation has developed a highly efficient stove that, when installed inside the home, vents all of the smoke ouotside, burns 65 percent less wood and is only warm to the touch. The benefits of these stoves include eliminating both the health damaging smoke from the inside of the home and the burn hazard of an open fire. Also, the stoves are so efficient they are making a huge, positive environmental impact.
Families with the stove are healthier and more productive. They are also able to decrease their time spent gathering wood. This additional time and productivity means they can move behond subistence farming to cash crop and more diversified farming. Better farming improves the quality of their lives. Furthermore, for every stove installed, 10 trees are planted in the village to start restoring the environment. The environment is given a chance to recover which again provides a better quality of life. It is a self-perpetuating, constructive cycle of life for the current generation and for all generations to come.
Project Summary
In April of 2012, MVPC volunteers will go to the remote village of Xoxlac, Guatemala to install approximately 100 stoves in homes. This is 100 families who will be given the gift of life now and for generations to come.
This project is in partnership with Hands for Peacemaking, which will provide the logistical support inside Guatemala. To date, Hands for Peacemaking has installed over 2,000 stoves in remote Guitemalan villages.
Giving Details
Your tax-deductible donations may be made by check (to MVPC). Please be sure to notatte "Guatemala Stove Project" on our check. To donate online, please use the "Donate Now" link to the left of this page.
The Hands for Peacemaking Foundation is a Christian based 501(c) (3) non-profit organization dedicated to helping the indegenous Mayan people of rural Guatemala.