“One of the reasons I started my website is that I wanted a place for women to come together and dream. We women need to know that we don’t have to hang on to an old dream that has stopped nurturing us—that there is always time to start a new dream. Nancy Hughes – a widow who wanted to spend her time doing something worthwhile – and ended up helping thousands of families in need.”—Marlo, MarloThomas.com
The request sounded reasonable enough: “Could you please delay dinner?” The 120 doctors, nurses, and support staff assembled in the dining hall looked up, curious to hear what the young Guatemalan woman with the striking dark eyes had to say. She began to speak.
“My name is Irma, and at the age of two, I fell into an open fire and burned my hands shut,” she began, a translator changing her native Kechiquel words into English. For 16 years, she said, she hadn’t been able to gather wood or cook, leaving her with little hope of ever attracting a husband. Now one of the team’s plastic surgeons had repaired her hands, separating her fused fingers. For the first time ever, she could make tortillas. She could marry. She could start a family.
“Thank you,” she said. “You are my miracle.”
No one spoke. “We were all weeping,” says Nancy Sanford Hughes, a volunteer who was cooking dinner for the medical team. “It was so profound. She had suffered for so long.”
The most dangerous activity for a woman in that part of the developing world was cooking for her family, often with a baby strapped to her back, leaning over an open campfire in a tiny, unventilated home. She had watched mothers and children come into the clinic with chronic coughs, debilitating burns, and hernias caused by having to lug heavy bundles of wood.
Helping others had been a big part of the very full life she had led back home in Oregon. She and her husband, George, known to everyone as Duffy, had three kids—a son and two daughters. But you’d never know it from looking around their dinner table most nights. You might see an exchange student from China or Finland (Nancy has hosted more than 50 in all), a couple of neighbors, Duffy’s brother and his four kids, or maybe a few of their son’s rowing buddies, fresh from a workout in the basement, where they’d set up their team training room.
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“The indigenous people are welcoming, friendly, honorable, lovely people with a wonderful sense of family,” Nancy says. “You can go into the poorest home and they will offer you something to drink.”
Since then, Nancy has launched StoveTeam International, which has helped raise nearly $1.2 million so that entrepreneurs could open eight factories in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Mexico. Called the Ecocina, the innovative new stove produces almost no smoke, uses less than half the wood of an open fire, and reduces carbon emissions and particulate matter by more than 70 percent. Even with manufacturing and labor costs, the factories have kept the price of the stove to just $50 or $60. To date, more than 38,000 stoves have been provided to families.
“People say, ‘You have such a passion,’ but I didn’t start with a passion. I just showed up on the medical team. To find your passion, you have to show up. You have to look around and see what needs doing, and just do it.”
To find out more about Nancy’s journey — and to read 59 other inspiring stories — buy your copy of “It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over.” Click here.
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