El Salvador: Oxfam beneficiaries share their harvest with poor communities
“When we went out and met we did not have anything to talk about. We clearly knew that we wanted to help that people”
José Alfredo Zuñiga
Between December 2006 and January 2007, several earthquakes shuddered San Lorenzo in El Salvador. Oxfam helped a small group of farmers to rehabilitate their crops. Today, they share their first harvest with poor communities.
Assuring food supplies
Between December 2006 and January 2007, a series of 900 earthquakes shuddered the region of San Lorenzo, destroying 90% of the houses. Oxfam America, through his counterpart Fundación para el Desarrollo (FUNDESA), gave help to 60 farmers by means of a food security project, providing seeds for the maize sow; fertilizers; insecticides and technical training among others. José Alfredo Zuñiga, one beneficiary of the project, explains the need for a food security project when the houses where more affected: “Those who invested in their houses (to repair them or to buy provisional houses), lost everything. We did not have anything to work with”, states. “I almost resigned to leave my lands without farming. But when the people of FUNDESA arrived and helped us, we got encouraged again to keep working.”
Apart from the donation of products to sew and farming, the project included an organization scheme with the farmers, technical assistance and training about the use of fertilizers and seeds, the correct use of the crop since the sowing to the harving, the storage of basic grains and the organic production.
Solidarity between poor communities
In September 2007, the coordinator of the farmers group where invited to a forum about water in Apaneca, organized by PRO-VIDA. There they met two coordinators of La Cancha hostel, where 200 families lived since June 2005, when a landslide devastated their hole community and they lost everything. Up to now there’s no solution for the situation. 200 families lived together in hovels made of metallic plates, of 16 square meters for each family, in a land of the size of a soccer field. When they saw the situation in which these families live, the farmers from San Lorenzo took a decision.
“The hostel coordinators invited us to see the situation they had to face”, explains José Alfredo. “We, beneficiaries of a project, visited the hostel and when we went out and met we did not have anything to talk about. We clearly knew that we wanted to help that people. Then, with 200 pounds (about 100 kilos) of each producer we could contribute with something”.
With a total of 12,000 pounds (about 6,000 kilos), the 60 producers could help to more than 250 families in La Cancha hostel, San Luis Herradura community, Guaymango community and some marginalized camps in San Salvador. “We don’t feel satisfied with what we have achieved until now. We plan to keep on with it. Maybe we cannot give as much help as we received, but we will always provide the seed” comments José Alfredo. “If we receive we have to give”.
