In 2003, Candis Krummel, Founder and Creative Director of the not-for-profit Cojolya Association of Maya Women Weavers, saw her first ONIL stove.  Tremendously impressed with the ingenious design of  the amazingly energy efficient cook stove created by the late Don O'Neal, she decided to provide an ONIL stove for each of Cojolya Association's women weavers. The stoves proved popular and the association began to offer them in the community as part of its social development program.

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After thirty-two years of guiding the Cojolya Association, Candis' attention turned to the serious environmental issues facing Lake Atitlan. Ensuring that Cojolya Association was fully capable of continuing on without her involvement, she then helped to organize a new NGO.  Cojolya's ONIL stove activity spun off to become part of the new, environmentally oriented NGO.

Named in the local dialect of Tzutujil, "Tui'k Ruch' Lew", which translates in English to "Helping the Earth,"  the organization is focused upon sustainable solutions for the serious environmental and developmental challenges facing Lake Atitlan and the Maya people living around it -- taking actions which benefit the planet Earth itself. "Tui'k Ruch' Lew / Helping the Earth" was legally registered as a non-lucrative, Guatemalan civil association  February 16, 2016.