Community Voices: Juana Mancia Alvarado

Protect the Environment Fund

Trees, Water & People

Juana Mancia Alvarado lives in the town of Rio Abajo, El Salvador and makes her living by selling homemade tortillas. Over the years, her health has been negatively impacted from breathing the toxic smoke and fumes emitted from her traditional cookstove. And, Juana is not alone. More than 2 million people in El Salvador, and 3 billion people worldwide, are impacted by indoor air pollution, the majority of which are women and children.

When families do not have access to electricity, they are forced to cook their meals over a fire, using wood or charcoal for fuel. This causes many human health problems, as well as deforestation throughout the world.

Trees, Water & People (TWP) and our partners address this problem by building clean cookstoves for families and small business owners like Juana. Each of our cookstoves decrease a families’ need for firewood by 50-70%, as compared to standard open fire cooking. When vented to the outside of the home, these improved cookstoves also decrease indoor air pollution, which is responsible for the death of 4.3 million people globally every year (World Health Organization, 2014).

Our partners at Arboles y Agua para el Pueblo built a Justa clean cookstove inside Juana’s kitchen, which removes nearly all the toxic smoke from the home. She says “now, I never get sick!” In addition, she has greatly reduced her fuelwood expenses, allowing her to save more of her hard earned money.

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