The numbers are staggering: 20 million cooking stoves needed in Central America alone… four billion people around the world who rely on open fires to cook inside their homes… four million people who die of respiratory diseases and burns from these indoor open fires.
Forest Resener, Operations Director of Stove Team International, was the interactive speaker at the meeting of Leicester Novus Rotary.
Actually, Mr Resener was not present for the Zoom meeting… he had prepared a 30-minute presentation with nine clickable links answering any questions his talk had not addressed.
Members asked a few additional questions, but the main one had been answered in the presentation: each stove built by partner projects in half a dozen countries in central America osts about $100 US Dollars (about £73 at the current exchange rate.)
Some members seemed attracted by the idea of making a donation to the charity which had been founded by the widow of a doctor who joined her Rotary club in Oregon after his death and then went to Guatemala with a team of Rotary health volunteers. While there, she worked in a kitchen and was so disturbed by the smoky conditions that she set up the charity.
You can find more about her work by visiting the charity’s website here https://www.stoveteam.org/ .
Last edited: 21.20 on Thursday, 08/07/2021
