HELP International

Dear family, friends, supporters and fans,

Now that I´ve been here in El Salvador for almost 2 months (!) I thought it was about time for a juicy update which I´ll be giving in a series of blogs. To review, I got a job this summer as a co-country director with an NGO called HELP International. The acronym stands for Help ELiminate Poverty. Its mission is ¨to provide a life-changing experience through service to the poor.¨ With the great volunteers who come to us, and the cool projects and partner organizations we work with down here, that is exactly what happens.

The organization is not religiously affiliated but most of its volunteers are from Brigham Young University and Utah Valley University. Groups from HELP go to El Salvador, Guatemala and Uganda. The volunteers come in three groups or waves (lasting 6 weeks) throughout the summer and pay their own way. Right now there are 15 volunteers in our three bedroom, one story house. We LOVE it! We´ve got two bathrooms. Enough said. We already sent home some of our first wavers and are going strong into our second wave! A few volunteers stay for more than one wave and a few stay all summer. We live in a very nice home, walled in, with a night guard, an alarm system, and in a safe part of the city. In fact, we live next to one of the large malls they have here Metro Centro! Sorry about the garbage bags in the picture of our house below. But with 16 people living here, garbage happens. (We still are finding a way to get the city to pick it up on a regular basis).

Next, let me introduce you to my co-country director, Blanca Gloria Rodriguez. As you can see from our picture below, we are easily mistaken for twins. I LOVE working with Blanca. We are partners in action and have had a great time finding a house, contacting partner organizations, managing project budgets, setting up projects for the volunteers, working with our team and facilitating their experiences here in El Salvador. We are passionate about helping our volunteers to experience and learn about poverty, third-world development, the beautiful people of El Salvador, their country´s history, and some of the tools or interventions that are used to fight back poverty and improve their life conditions.

To give you an idea, about 80% of El Salvador´s population lives on less than $4 a day. The wealth of the country (and it has great wealth) is enjoyed by 20% of the population. For a long time, its main export was coffee. But since the coffee market has downed here, they have had trouble finding other valuable exports. Shockingly, one third of El Salvador´s population lives in the USA and send money back home to their families via remittances. El Salvador had a 15 year civil war from about 1980 until 1992, which of course, was horrible. The people became so tired of all the fighting and deaths. It´s been 15 years and the scars of the war have largely healed over. El Salvador tries to make its way forward progressing, but there is still a lot of poverty. It is also a country that has suffered many natural disasters such as earthquakes and sometimes hurricanes. El Salvador is filled with many good people. Many humble people, who love their families and love peace.

The reason for the great inequality? As I have tried to sort it all out and piece together the history of the country, I basically sense one main reason: A long history of the wealthy and powerful being unwilling to share. Things are slowly getting better. There is a lot of history to overcome and complex challenges to deal with. But they are making their way to a better future and we are here to help them where we can.