Magic Recipe El Salvador

Many communities in El Salvador are adapting to the realities of climate change and economic change throughout the country.

With Support from Us aid and the UN they are piloting a a interesting project known as micro businesses in communities in El Salvador. to help Sustain growth and the possibility of a future for the rural small impoverished towns.

for those that do not know what a micro business is a micro business is a scaled down version of a regular business that is started with as little capitol as possible and usually has less than 5 employees.

In one city in El Salvador a small community outside san Miguel they are doing just that. With the help of volunteers working with this community there have a plan to address their economic, social, and environmental needs that are present with in this community. This area is home to wet lands beaches and some of the largest area of mangrove trees in the country.
Still this being one of the poorest areas in El Salvador, the region's low elevation and location make it vulnerable to the effects of floods, storms, earthquakes and no sources of fresh water or food when natural disasters hit. Along with the social and economic challenges that they face makes it a good place to start a micro business so that they can help themselves become more self sufficient as a community and as individuals. One of the US aid workers in charge of the project says "There was a lot of humanitarian assistance after Hurricane Mitch, but there was no long-term vision," says Sandra Thomson, one of the Sierra Club's project leaders. "With this project, we're looking at ways to empower communities to help them be more self-sufficient” says Sandra Thompson.

It takes into account the communities current needs and the possible future needs of the community and helps them all work together for a common goal. Money comes from actual lender in small denomination of 100- a few thousand dollars which they are expected to pay back when their business is to a point to be able to do so. The project takes a holistic approach to the region's economic, social, and environmental challenges, which are inextricably linked. There are few jobs for the 8,000 people who live in 25 small communities. They gain their livelihood from the natural resource base, fishing from the Bay, cultivating crops, and cutting down mangrove forests for firewood.

A proposed commercial shrimp operation would provide jobs, but it would also destroy precious mangrove forests—trees that can offer protection from flooding and severe weather. The partners are working with the communities to develop micro businesses that create jobs without damaging the environment. In this way, people can earn a living without making their communities more vulnerable to job loss and the natural deterioration of natural resources. So with a more sustainable income from local jobs that do not depend on dwindling natural resources, communities are also more self-sufficient.

The micro business Idea has taken hold in many nations but so far the ones setup here in el Salvador have proven to be very successful. There are many types of business started for example some woman from the corner street always got together on Saturdays to chat about their days and families all the while knitting shirts and shorts pants and all types of sowing to keep their families in clothes. With a small 500 dollar loan this small band of woman started a fabric making business that now sells clothes worldwide. They started out just themselves added employees and now have more then 1000 and the main job provider in this community. It’s the fact that they wanted to achieve something on their own that would make a difference and the micro business model showed them away.

In all ways this model will help future communities and stabilize local jobs for many years to come and I am proud to have participated in a small way to help. It s not effects you in a outside way but you know it effects you in a personal way as well. Ultimately, it's giving people the opportunity to develop alternative livelihoods that leave the natural environment intact and leave them better able to cope with climate change.

Remittance at risk for families back home?

El Salvador continues to struggle along with the US because recent remittance payments have dropped. This will become worry some for families here and there loved ones back home. as the recession takes a hold of Latin America as well and spreads.


to read original article click Here


INTIPUCA, El Salvador -- For almost two generations, residents of this rural community who emigrated to the United States have sent back tens of millions of dollars to support their families and bring prosperity to their once impoverished town.

Officials of Intipucá, 120 miles east of San Salvador, were so grateful for those remittances that they built a park to honor migrants, with a statue representing the first resident to leave for the United States back in 1967.

''Remittances have transformed Intipucá,'' said Omar Chávez, a town leader and himself the beneficiary of funds sent by his brother Pedro, who has lived in Maryland since 1979. Thanks to those remittances, the Chávez family was able to cover basic needs, like food and clothing, and educate its children.

Now, the slowdown in the growth of remittances caused by the U.S. economic crisis threatens the welfare of residents of this town of 10,000 and towns throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

The 2008 Inter-American Development Bank survey of remittances from the United States to Latin America shows that remittances, flat for much of last year, might even begin to fall this year.

The survey added that while the total of remittances from the United States to Latin America will probably reach overall levels comparable to those of the past two years, the number of migrants sending remittances may fall by up to 25 percent during 2008, compared with 2006.
Such a slowdown ''would negatively impact the standards of living of millions of families in the region who depend on the remittances migrants send home,'' according to IDB officials.

CLOUDY OUTLOOK

In a report on the outlook of remittance flows from 2008 to 2010, the World Bank said that remittances to Latin America will remain flat next year in the best-case scenario, but that in the worst-case scenario, they will decline to $58 billion from $61 billion.

''The crisis is now in the advanced markets, and it will have an impact in the emerging markets,'' said Massimo Cirasino, a World Bank economist.

Cirasino said that all Latin American governments should be worried about a decrease in the flow of remittances, but that countries with weak economies will be more negatively affected. ''Some countries have a certain leeway,'' he said. ''In a country like Brazil, for example, there will be pressure on politicians to activate programs'' to stimulate the economy. But, he added, ''there are other countries that don't have the financial resources.'' Those countries, Cerasino said, will have to turn to the IDB or other international institutions for help.

In El Salvador, remittances account for 18 percent of the country's gross domestic product. They are the equivalent of 126 percent of El Salvador's total exports and of 242 percent of all direct foreign investment.

Last year, $70 of every $100 of El Salvador's income from abroad came from remittances, while only $5 of every $100 came from traditional agricultural exports, such as coffee and cotton. Back in 1978, $81 of every $100 of income from abroad came from agricultural exports.

Eighty percent of the remittance revenue comes from Salvadorans in the United States. The numerous roadside billboards advertising remittance-related businesses frequently feature stars and stripes or other red, white and blue themes.

Rich and Poor.

Agreat story by Coco McCabe returning from a recent trip from san salvador whose first hand knowledge explores the poverty that is so prevalent here.

SAN SALVADOR -- What was it about El Salvador? This was my first trip to the country and I hadn’t quite analyzed the sweep of emotions -- disquiet among them -- that it had aroused since my plane touched down in the dark. I couldn’t see much as we sped away from the airport that first night, but I could feel plenty: the deliciousness of the air conditioning in the brand new van that picked me up, the smoothness of the highway -- as wide and well-paved as any in the US -- slipping away beneath us as we rolled toward San Salvador. Roads like this don’t come cheaply, I thought.

Soon, lights from the city -- about 1.6 million people live there -- flooded the sky and we were climbing steep hills past luxury hotels and San Salvador’s version of the World Trade Center, with a new, towering addition still under construction. Wealth seemed to shimmer everywhere.
But in the morning, I began to see a different El Salvador. We drove, first thing, out to the municipality of Santa Catarina Masahuat to visit a program Oxfam America had helped to fund on preserving indigenous knowledge. Up a rough road, at the crest of a hill, Cesar Donal Ascencio Reyes, a community activist, was waiting for us outside his house of corrugated metal and mud bricks. Though he knew nothing about construction, he had built it himself. That’s what you do when you don’t have money, he said.

And many people in El Salvador don’t: Almost 41 percent of the country’s 5.7 million citizens live on less than $2 a day, including 19 percent who survive on less than $1 a day. Many of the houses in Reyes’ neighborhood looked just like his. Light pricked through pinholes in the walls, ruts pocked the dirt floor, and the metal roof trapped the heat, baking the interior. Creature comforts included a latrine at the back of a chicken pen and a concrete tub -- or "pila'' -- for storing water. Water from the tap only runs twice a day, for one hour in the morning and another in the afternoon.

Reyes' house sat on a 2,500-square-foot plot -- a chunk of land he had managed to buy for about $2,000. Thirteen years later, he was still paying it off. But a dream has kept him going.
"I'm thinking about how I can split this up and leave a house for each of my girls," he said. "That’s my dream." Three daughters dividing one small plot would still be better than having no plot and no home of their own at all -- the fate his parents endured.

Back in San Salvador that evening, I thought about Reyes’ pila and its water with the greenish cast as I stepped into the shower in my hotel room. The water shot from the shower head, hot and without limit. Later, I flicked on the air conditioning, and slipped between the crisp sheets of the bed someone else had made for a restless night’s sleep. A couple of days later, in a semi-flooded field next to a small, Oxfam-built house in Animas Arriba, my colleague, Enrique Garcia, summed up what was bothering me.

"The main problem in Latin America is the inequities," he said. "The countries are not poor; the people are. In a very small country you can see the world. El Salvador is a good example: You can find the poorest and the richest."

The earth beneath our feet was spongy and water had pooled in the deep hoof prints left by grazing cattle. A few weeks before, the field had been a lagoon, swamped, as it was every year, with too much rain. And at its muddy edge lived Rogelio Ochoa, his wife Maria Eugenia Mendoza de Ochoa, and six children. The little house, with walls and a roof of corrugated metal built high off the ground on cement blocks, was theirs -- a replacement for the old adobe one that had collapsed the year before during unusually heavy rains. The flooding that ensued also wiped out much of the corn in the area that small farmers were on the verge of harvesting.Corn constitutes their basic staple and, if they’re lucky, earns them a small income.

In a country the size of Massachusetts, where for years most of the arable land was consolidated in the hands of a few, many poor rural farmers rent the land they till. And some, like the Ochoa family, don’t own the ground on which their houses sit. With nowhere else to live, the Ochoas had settled in marginal land that, at certain times of the year, was almost a bog.

The profile for El Salvador on the US State Department’s website says that country’s economy has been growing steadily since the civil war ended in 1992 and the poverty that once afflicted 66 percent of the people at the close of the war had dropped to 31 percent in 2006.

But numbers crunched by bureaucrats in the comfort of their office buildings are just statistics. They don’t tell the whole story -- the story we really need to hear-- the way a visit to the countryside can.

"If you go out of the capital and go to see a family, you can feel it, " Garcia said. "You can touch the poverty."

story referanced from
http://www.boston.com/news/world/blog/2008/11/el_salvador_fro.html

Thought I would share something..

I was surfing the internet the other day and came across a very interesting blog.. http://jesusfloresfotos.blogspot.com/ This blog is about a photo journalist in el Salvador who is trying to collect the images of a side of El Salvador only rumored about but rarely seen..

This blog depicts a side of El Salvador that until recently has been withheld from the world or themselves either because people choose to ignore it and pretend it does not exist or the suppression and censorship by the government..

The establishment of the national police force school and the recent resignation of the national police chief bring article here

(http://www.reuters.com/article/newsMaps/idUSN2350739120080823)

Indicates to me that they are trying to change but it will take sometime.. and el Salvadorians need to stand together and say enough is enough to help restore their neighborhoods and provide better security for themselves and their families. But. Looking at the pictures by this very talented I hopes tell the other story of el Salvador not to scare away but maybe to anger those enough to want to do something for a positive change.