Over the past year, I have been researching and building
different smokeless stove designs along with investigating the
use of their byproduct, charcoal, as an organic soil amendment.
With this information, I traveled to Calhuitz, Guatemala along
with 12 other students to lead an education and integration
project focused on efficient cook stoves. In our month stay, we
were successful in designing, testing, and integrating a
cookstove design that produced hardly any smoke, could be built
with local materials for under 10 dollars, and used 80% less
wood than a traditional chimney stove. Our first step was to
educate the community about the negative impacts of open stoves
on the environment and health. To do this, we gave lectures in
Spanish (translated into the Mayan dialect) to large groups of
community members at local meetings. Next, we surveyed 15
families about their home situation, the type of stove they were
using, and any problems associated with it. This step was used
to assess the need for the new inn