Pilot Project to help Peasants in El Salvador is Launched
Washington Hispanic
February 2004
Victor Cacycho

Translation by PADF

An agro industrial pilot development project, with the objective of increasing revenues for the peasant population of El Salvador and generating new jobs, was launched this week in Washington, D.C.

The initiative, which is supported by the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), will initially involve 42 Salvadoran families and it will develop non-traditional organic agriculture products destined to internal commercialization and to exporting.

Walter Monge, representative of the Comité Unido Cívico Salvadoreño-Unidense, pointed out that Salvadorans living in the metropolitan area (Maryland, Virginia, and D.C.) have joined to help peasant families in five cooperatives established in San Pedro Masahuat, La Paz.

“These families will be trained to grow these products, and, also, an irrigation system and a processing and packaging plant will be installed,” he mentioned.

They will also receive guidance to market such products in El Salvador and also to export them to the United States market.

To this respect, John Sanbrailo, PADF’s executive director, indicated that the pilot project is supported by the Salvadoran NGO CONFRAS (Co-federation of Agrarian Reform Cooperatives).

Sanbrailo mentioned that “many families will be helped to identify new opportunities and ways to become further involved in the economic and social development of their countries of origin.”

PADF, as well USAID, hope that programs like these will multiply in years to come, and that “they will become a more efficient tool to reduce poverty” in El Salvador.

In the same way, it was announced that these organisms are supporting similar initiatives through alliances with Mexican and Haitian immigrant groups, which at the same time support poor peasants in their respective countries, “so that they can become self sustainable.”