Building Towards Balance in Coastal El Salvador
At TWP, we’ve always believed local leaders are the best equipped to address their communities’ challenges. But in many of the regions we work, women experience those challenges in distinct ways and continue to face barriers to leading their solutions.
The long term rootedness of communities can not come without the active leadership of the women who sustain them.
This principle is integrated in all of our partnerships, but we are particularly proud to highlight the work of our newest partners – the sister organizations of Asociación Mangle and Asociación Cincahuite — as they continue to strengthen women’s livelihoods in coastal El Salvador.
Both organizations are based in the Bajo-Lempa Jiquilisco Bay, on the Pacific coast of the country, where poverty rates and vulnerability to natural disasters remain high. As many families in the region face food insecurity, particularly women-headed households, we’ve supported Asociación Mangle’s efforts to equip local women with training and supplies for sustainable poultry raising. The training focuses on production of poultry feed, made entirely from natural local ingredients, as well as long-term care and integration in agroecology systems. Many of the 18 women who participated in the program have raised their monthly income as much as $100 per month through the sale of eggs and meat while also strengthening household food security and nutrition.
Alongside these efforts, Associacion Cincahuite has focused on restoring coastal areas crucial to fishing-based livelihoods, flood prevention, and local biodiversity. Through our support last year, they worked with local fishing cooperatives to plant more than 40,000 mangrove seedlings in vulnerable areas of the coastline. Many of these fishing cooperatives are led by women, whose livelihoods rely on the health of fish nurseries within mangrove ecosystems.
These women see clearly the connection between the wellbeing of their lands and the wellbeing of their own families, and they continue to fight for both.
El Salvador, like many countries across the Americas, is facing heightened threats and lowered resources to the causes we hold central; but across the Americas, communities like these are also continuing to fight, continuing to live by their values, and continuing to work towards a more balanced future.
