Our Approach
80% understanding. 20% technology. A design principle, not a spending ratio. Understand before you engineer.
PATENT PENDINGA technically excellent solution can still fail when the environment in which it must work is misunderstood. Trust, governance, relationships, language, household priorities, cooking practices, and social and political fluency reveal the constraints engineering must actually solve.
We Do Not Enter Communities Cold. PWS brings engineering, science, and technical problem-solving. We rely on proven on-the-ground partners such as The Hunger Project–Mexico and PROASUS for community relationships, regional knowledge, history, language, governance, and social and political fluency. Their role is also operational: reliable suppliers and businesses, storage, transportation, last-mile delivery, and an established in-country structure for implementation are part of what makes the work possible.
Long-term partners also help us hear what people actually think — not simply what they believe an outside organization wants to hear. That makes candid feedback possible and gives us the information needed to change the design when the community tells us something is not working.
PATENT PENDINGFreshly trained stove-building Promoters.
The People Who Cook Know What the Stove Must Do. Women helped shape stove height, layout, cooking surfaces, and aesthetics through testing and feedback.
Participation Happens Before Construction. In 2024, women receiving Gen 2.2 stoves gathered to select the pot sets that would accompany them.
discuss → demonstrate → choose → train → build → use → learn
The People Most Affected Should Have the Strongest Voice. Women shape the cooking requirements. Promoters who live in the implementation communities reveal construction and maintenance problems through field use. PWS technical staff drives the engineering response, and Promoters apply and often refine those solutions in local conditions.
PATENT PENDING
PATENT PENDINGPeople Should See It Work Before They Are Asked to Invest. Demonstration lets families judge fit, smoke removal, cooking performance, and wood savings.
The Stove Is Built Where It Will Be Used. Trained local Promoters build on site using reusable tooling. Based on field observation, many installations also involve families reshaping the cooking space around the stove — roughly 40% new buildings, 40% major renovations, and 20% minor renovations.
PATENT PENDINGInstalled Does Not Mean Used. The harder question is whether families are still cooking on the stove.
There Is No Such Thing as “Just Install the Stove.” History, governance, language, geography, relationships, and past experience with outside organizations all matter.
Success Means Communities Need Us Less Over Time. PWS technical staff leads hands-on training with the Mexico operation; experienced Promoters can support newer teams, partners anchor relationships, and local suppliers support production. The goal is growing local capability without sacrificing quality control.
PATENT PENDINGThe 80/20 Rule of Adoption is a mnemonic: 80% understanding, 20% technology. It is not a budget, staffing, or time-allocation ratio. Product development itself is overwhelmingly technical. The rule reminds us that the right engineering problem is revealed through trust, lived local knowledge, and co-creation.
