HONDURAS

Honduras is facing some of the toughest social and environmental challenges in its history, with high rates of out migration due to lack of economic opportunity, and negative impacts of climate change. In the last 10 years, the Southern pine beetle, coffee rust, extreme forest fires, and back-to-back hurricanes have destroyed large areas of forest and farmland, while hundreds of thousands of people have become internally displaced refugees and others have been forced to flee the country.   

Our approach is to address the roots of migration from rural areas in Honduras in order to strengthen local people’s ability to maintain their ways of life, and continue to be active players in grassroots social and environmental recovery. TWP leverages the expertise of our local partners and frontline communities in Honduras to collaboratively lead and finance projects that create jobs, protect and restore natural resources, and improve community health and resilience. 


In 1998, our work in Honduras began with partners AHDESA and the Aprovecho Research Center of Cottage Grove, Oregon to develop the Justa cookstove, named after community leader Doña Justa Nuñez from the village of Suyapa. In 2019, we rekindled our alliance with the Ecological Committee of the Aldea de Suyapa (COEAS) to support their efforts to protect Tegucigalpa’s most important watershed.

Since we launched the Justa Stove program in 1998, over 300,000 units of this stove have been installed in Honduras.

 How we achieve locally-driven solutions: 

  • Co-designing Central America’s flagship improved biomass cookstove, the Justa stove, with over 300,000 units installed to date. 

  • Creating jobs through cookstove manufacture and installation; each Justa stove installed puts $10-$20 in stove builder’s pockets (40% women), and employs welders, brickmakers, sheet metal workers and drivers.

  • Responding to an increase in basic needs deriving from environmental crises such as the 2015 coffee rust and Southern pine beetle disease, the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, and 2020 twin hurricanes Eta and Iota.

  • Strengthening community-based conservation in the Triquilapa Watershed by helping an Indigenous urban community legalize the community watershed and reduce deforestation through environmental education.

  • Community-led reforestation with dozens of communities across the country.

  • Strengthening community-to-community ties and coffee producer-led farm recovery via agroforestry, crop diversification, organic farming and certification.