This fall has been an exciting time for the plancha stove project. It started with a first-hand report of how these stoves are changing lives in Guatemala, brought to us by Marco Maldonado of our partner Hands for Peacemaking Foundation (HFPF), who kicked off his month-long trip to the US with a guest appearance at our annual fundraising dinner.

With help from Burn Design Lab’s Joe Gilmour, HFPF built five of our first improved plancha prototypes in the mountain town of Barrillas, Guatemala and distributed them to families nearby for real-world testing and feedback on the design from a cook’s point of view. Until then, some of the testing families had simply cooked over an open fire. When the team returned after a few weeks to collect the prototypes and the users’ feedback, the families that had never used plancha stoves before pleaded with the team to leave the test models there to use indefinitely. Once they had experienced the benefit of this cleaner way of cooking, they begged to keep the prototype stoves so that they would not need return to their open fires. Donations, from people like you, made it possible for these families
to permanently keep the prototype cookstoves.

Armed with that feedback, we created a second iteration of the design. The HFPF team built one and conducted a focus group with local women (photo) — the other format we use to gather ideas from the ultimate users as we progress toward a final design. These women all had experience cooking on plancha stoves and were able to quickly provide us with comments and critique that led to further design adjustments to better suit the stove to its users. We were glad to hear their thoughts so we could refine the design before we committed to building five more stoves for home placement. We’ve also built a prototype of the same stove here on Vashon that is undergoing testing for the next five weeks so that we can learn more about its emissions and fuel efficiency.

— Joe Gilmour