Agros Blog

With Mother’s Day coming up, this weekend is a good time to reflect upon everything that mothers do to strengthen their families and communities. At Agros, we’ve learned that investing in women is a necessary component in our holistic community development model. Not only are women successful entrepreneurs, but their commitment to reinvesting profits into their families also reaps rewards for the larger community around them. Our recent discussion of Community Banks, and the small businesses that women have launched because of them, highlights the vital difference that women can make in Agros communities.

This has been a great success of Agros’ development model, because it allows women to provide, in every way, for their families as they all journey out of poverty together. Another way in which women help to provide for their families is by supplying them with the proper nutrition they need through meal preparation. However, this can also be a major health issue, as an article featured last week in the Huffington Post highlighted.

The article pointed out the dramatic health impact that unclean cooking can have on women and children in the developing world; non-communicable diseases, which include cardiovascular disease, chronic lung diseases, and cancer – cause two out of three deaths in the world today, and 80 percent of those occur in developing countries. In lower-income countries air pollution from the use of solid fuels for cooking and heating is the biggest risk factor for chronic lung diseases such as COPD.

In Central America, where Agros works, more than 80 percent of rural families generate heat and prepare food using traditional open-fire cook stoves, which unfortunately compromise the health, quality of life, and environment of this population. These tragic side effects are found primarily among women and children due to the fact that women often spend the most time cooking, and that their children are often present for this task.

Thankfully, Agros recognizes that in order to promote family health, we must make clean cooking a priority. We encourage our communities to build efficient cook stoves, which produce more heat with less wood than open fire cooking and also cook food faster so women have more time for other activities.

By building clean stoves that allow smoke to clear out of the home, community members can minimize health risks for their families. It’s vital that we make this a priority, along with accessing education, training, and growing productive crops – as these families journey out of poverty.

How can you help? In our gift catalog, we offer a Family Health Package consisting of an efficient cook stove and latrine, which allows families to promote healthier practices in their homes. Of course, there are plenty of other gift opportunities that also allow you to celebrate and honor your mother by investing in a rural woman. As you celebrate Mother’s Day this weekend, take the time to reflect with gratitude on your life, and how you can honor your mother by empowering a woman in Central America or Mexico:

• Family Health Package
• New Mother and Baby Kit
• Women’s Small Business Loan
• Flock of Chicks
Learn more at the Agros One Seed Gift Catalog!