We’ve changed our name from Encore.org to CoGenerate! Join us at cogenerate.org to bridge generational divides and co-create the future.

We’ve changed our name from Encore.org to CoGenerate! Join us at cogenerate.org to bridge generational divides and co-create the future.

Editor’s note: Purpose Prize winner Nancy Sanford Hughes, a longtime member of the volunteer organization Rotary International, was honored at the White House alongside 11 fellow Rotarians as a Champion of Change. The White House launched the Champions of Change program in 2011 to recognize citizens improving communities. President Obama has said honorees help “ensure that our country’s best days lie ahead.” Encore.org takes this opportunity to present Hughes’ story in her own words.

In May 2001, at the age of 60, my husband died after an eight-year battle with breast cancer. That year my life took a new direction. It all started because I volunteered with a 10-day medical team in Guatemala. I volunteered for two years with the team until one day a local woman named Irma came into the kitchen where I was working and asked if she could speak to us.

She had fallen into an open cooking fire at the age of 2. Her hands had been burned shut. For 16 years she had prayed for a miracle, and our medical team was her miracle: They had restored the use of her hands.I knew we needed to prevent burns, but burns were only part of the problem. The babies strapped to their mother’s backs were breathing the equivalent of three packs of cigarettes per day, and the leading cause of death of children under 5 was lower respiratory infection caused by those open cooking fires. I knew I had to do something.

The only solution was to help establish sustainable factories to make and sell safe, fuel-efficient stoves that would save lives.

Within a year, and with the help of my Rotary club and other supporters, we not only developed a safe, portable, affordable, fuel-efficient stove, but we helped a local man named Gustavo Pea start a factory to produce the stoves in El Salvador.In the intervening years I helped start six factories in five countries, with more in development. The nonprofit organization I founded, StoveTeam International, works with entrepreneurs to create their own sustainable businesses. To date they have produced and sold more than 35,000 stoves. Through this mission we’ve improved the lives of more than 280,000 individuals in Mexico and Central America.

To watch a short video highlighting her work, go here.

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