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Building strong communities

In the early 1990s, El Salvador's 12-year civil war came to a close. The war left communities fractured and neighbors suspicious of one another.

CFCA's continued presence in Salvadoran communities not only brought life-giving benefits such as food, education and health care to its people, but it also started healing the divide in the community and restoring trust among the neighbors.

The Santa Ana project works  closely with families like Rosa's (pictured right) to help them achieve their personal goals and to attain self-sufficiency through tools such as livelihood initiatives. Mothers groups actively participate in the selection of  enefits and services through CFCA's Hope for a Family sponsorship program.

Support for the elderly

The Hope for a Family program is the only major sponsorship program that provides benefits to the elderly. For Ines, 88, and Raymunda, 84, that means monthly food provisions of rice, beans, sugar, and more. It also means if they get sick, they can go to the doctor. They are honored with birthday, Christmas and Mother’s Day celebrations.

Personal assistance and home visits by the CFCA social workers help ensure that Ines and Raymunda have steadfast support. And, letters of encouragement from their sponsors give the elderly hope.

Environmental education

Piles of trash dot the landscape of the beautiful Salvadoran countryside, while empty plastic bags, newspapers and scraps of paper flutter in the wind. Ineffective trash collection systems and lack of environmental awareness have contributed to the litter accumulation.

Environmental education is something the Santa Ana project offers to the elderly, parents, teens and children, through monthly meetings, lectures and green initiatives. To contribute to the environmental consciousness of sponsored individuals and their families, the project decided to switch from using plastic bags to reusable bags when distributing monthly benefits.

Each sponsored member receives two reusable bags. One is kept at the project office and the other is given to families with their monthly Hope for a Family program benefits. The following month the family returns the first bag and takes home the second bag full of food.

Yesenia Alfaro, project coordinator, estimates that the reusable bags will save the environment from 288,000 plastic bags and generate an annual savings of $20,000 for the project.

"This has created a clean and green process in which families understand and learn that we can reuse the same couple of bags and at the same time reduce the amount of plastic bags we use," Alfaro said.

Sponsor a child in El Salvador

Read a letter from Yesenia Alfaro, Santa Ana project coordinator.

Sources:

World Factbook