Monica’s Bright Blue Kitchen and a Healthier Planet

Monica loves her life in rural Peru. She loves her family, her village, the fields, and the mountains. “It is beautiful,” she says. But she hates to cook.

Like millions of people in rural Peru who still use open-fire cookstoves inside their homes, when Monica cooks, her house fills with smoke, the walls become blackened with soot, everyone coughs, and she still needs to spend hours every day collecting firewood. That’s why she hates to cook. And for Mother Earth, these inefficient cookstoves emit tonnes of climate-warming carbon into the atmosphere and deforest the countryside in the ever-widening search for firewood.

That’s why this project installs efficient, ventilated cookstoves that burn half as much wood, significantly reducing deforestation and carbon emissions in the atmosphere. Over 105,000 new cookstoves have been installed in Peru, and, with your continued support, another 45,000 stoves will soon reach families all across the region. Each cookstove reduces carbon emissions annually by three tonnes, and, when the goal of 150,000 cookstoves is reached, 450,000 tonnes of carbon will be eliminated every year.

Monica was amazed by the new cookstove. No more smoke, no more coughing, no more blackened walls. The cookstove cooked faster and meant Monica spent less time gathering wood, so she now spends more time educating her children, including about the responsibility we all have to help the environment. And now she actually likes to cook.

Monica and everyone in her village send to all of you a heartfelt “Thank You!” for your support.