El Almendro: A Place of Possibilities

It is with great excitement that International Partners announces a partnership with an inspiring community in El Salvador. These poor families work at subsistence agriculture to survive and now to cope with the devastation from the earthquakes of 2001. They offer us all an inspiring lesson in self-determination, hope, and generosity. Neighbors have established a community group of 115 families known as New Horizons.

Over the past four years New Horizons has worked with nongovernmental organizations in El Salvador to provide clean drinking water, train women, and promote child development. Although most of these parents are illiterate, they understand that their only way out of poverty is to educate their children. Their children must walk miles to the nearest school, but, worse, their deprivation creates such learning deficits that few succeed. To support their children these parent, without any resources, started a pre-school that now serves 96 children.

On January 13, 2001, an earthquake destroyed most of their adobe and lath-and-mud houses. Rescue workers took a week to reach the village of El Almendro where eighty percent of the families were left homeless. The earthquake affected over 740 people in this community, 380 of them children. The building used for a school was destroyed.

El Almendro is not a community easily defeated. When our International Partners delegation arrived in El Almendro, only three weeks after the first earthquake, we were greeted with a parade of hopeful children and parents carrying signs and singing songs. In a makeshift school without walls, parents, children, teachers, and community leaders told us of their plans for building a school. In the midst of devastation, when they had lost so much, their signs read, "we need pencils".

When asked their priorities, teachers told us that what they needed most was training. In response, International Partners submitted and has received a pilot grant to train the teachers of El Almendro and 10 similar villages.

This community of committed parents and community leaders who have taken the initiative to organize themselves and joyous children who are eager to learn has inspired IP and several other local non-government organizations (NGO). El Almendro is exactly the kind of place that deserves our support and attention. With help from El Salvadorian NGO's, they now have a low interest loan to buy land for a permanent school and have inspired a church in Mexico to supply enough building materials for two classrooms.

International Partners has already begun supporting El Almendro in several ways:

• Earthquake relief money raised in February bought food for the children of El Almendro.
• Teachers from this village are participating in the teacher-training project.
• School supplies collected by WES Sunday School Children and International Partners were delivered to El Almendro in August 2001 and January 2002.

However, there is more we can do. The El Almendro School has 12 pencils shared by 96 students, little paper, no books, nor any teaching equipment or supplies. Our next project on behalf of El Almendro is raising money to provide each student with what they need to succeed in school.

Our goals will be:

• Supplies for each student
• Books and educational materials
• Essential equipment (letters, blocks, etc.)

Once the children of El Almendro have what they need, our attention will go to the new school in El Zapata, and then to additional rural schools.

This village full of hopeful people is determined to move beyond the obstacles that confront them. We can reward their initiative by becoming their international partner.

The canton of El Almendro is located in the municipality of Sonzacate in the Department of Sonsonate.