Building a Sustainable Clean Cookstoves Sector in Honduras

In 2025, more than 150 people were employed through TWP’s work. 

We know that people can only sustain their territories if they can sustain their families. And like many of our programs, our clean cookstoves program in Honduras keeps this recognition central, investing in sustained benefits for local communities, economies, and environments.

In conventional clean cookstoves programs, large organizations often build stoves rapidly, attempting to reach a maximum number of stoves per dollar. But this approach misses the bigger vision of sustainability we are all working towards.

How are local people included in the process? Who will fix the stove if it breaks? And how will more stoves be built in the future? 

At TWP, even more than building stoves, we focus on building systems – systems that ensure locals lead the process and have the capacity to carry it forward long into the future. 

As an integral part of the clean cookstoves program, we’re collaborating with our local partner, AHDESA, to expand the Maestros Fogoneros network, which trains and equips local community members to establish their own small businesses as stove builders and repairers. Currently, 22 stove builders are participating in the program, significantly increasing their monthly income, and another 17 individuals are employed through the local design and fabrication of stove parts. 

“The creation of small local businesses for the construction and sale of stoves continues to be a driver of employment and economic autonomy in local communities” – AHDESA, Honduras

In 2025, the Maestros Foganores network constructed 1,390 stoves within rural Honduran households.

That’s 1,390 families who aren’t breathing in smoke every time they cook a meal, saving hundreds of dollars a year on purchase of firewood. And that’s additional 39 families with a valuable new source of income.

That's thousands of trees still growing, and thousands of metric tons of carbon not emitted into the atmosphere. 

That’s a win-win for people and the planet.