Twenty-four years ago, the Caritas of the Diocese of Santa Ana decided to work on the issue of equality between women and men. The bishop at the time was not very supportive, but Manuel Morán, then coordinator of the work in the rural areas, who avoided attracting attention during the first years of the process, began the work of training and organizing women in the countryside. To this day, Misereor, among other institutions, cooperates financially with Caritas Santa Ana in this work.

 

As a result of the training and monthly meetings in many of the communities, self-saving groups were formed. The Self-Monitoring Committee grew out of the monthly meetings of the female leaders of these local groups. Similarly, other support committees were formed during the process to address specific issues, such as the Family Support Committee, which provides support for productive initiatives and entrepreneurship. At the same time, promoter committees were created. The starting point for the Self-Saving Groups was a small start-up capital provided by Caritas, which stimulated the savings of the group members. As soon as the group's stability and discipline in saving is proven, the participants can lend money from the group's fund, which allows them to carry out productive initiatives, whether in agriculture or in other sectors such as clothing production, cosmetics and others.

 

The Self-Monitoring Committee holds a monthly community meeting among local groups, which allows for the exchange of knowledge and feelings among its members, the majority of whom are women, who continuously convince themselves and decide to take action.

The training covers several topics: ecological agriculture, savings, children and youth, housing, productive initiatives, water treatment, energy-saving stoves, among others. The training goes hand in hand with practical implementation, with visits and exchange of experiences. Laura García, one of the most dynamic members of the collective, recalls: "The men didn't think it was important, neither the topics nor our meetings, but we learned what was important for the men”. Jasmin Velásquez, another committee member, recalls what happened when she put into practice what she had learned about growing tomatoes. Neighbors saw Jasmin's tomato plants and said to her husband,"Your wife has beaten you”. 

 

Beyond the promoter committees and self-savings groups, the Self-Monitoring Committee is a space for intercommunal encounters that generate relationships of affection, solidarity, fraternity, personal liberation, self-help, dialogues, self-therapy and listening.

Families in El Salvador typically save what little they can in traditional banks. The banks invest the capital they collect and make profits that never reach the savers who own the money. The interest paid by the banks on savings is minimal, and in some cases, they have to pay to keep their money. The women in the self-savings groups have broken with this tradition through a personal transformation: replacing the paradigm of traditional bank savings with community savings. Guillermo Navarro of Caritas Nacional shares his thoughts:"Since the groups are composed mainly of women, they become a mechanism for women who save to achieve economic independence from their husbands, thus establishing more equitable relationships. This gives them greater self-esteem and self-confidence. The self-savings groups are a means of solving daily needs of various kinds for families who come in search of credit, but they are also a means of stimulating or encouraging the creation of community productive initiatives".

 

During this process, which has been going  more than 20 years, the number of groups in the different communities has increased and not all of them have the direct support of Caritas and its training centers. Faced with this situation, and thanks to the intercommunal articulation of the groups, grouped in the Self-Monitoring Committee, a modus operandi has been chosen: with the support of Caritas, promoters are trained in the fields of agriculture and housing, most of them women. The promoters not only put into practice what they have learned, but also share their knowledge with interested people in their communities. Thanks to this cascading replication, the knowledge reaches a much larger number of people.

 

The women agree that their standard of living and that of their families has improved. They practice organic agriculture, produce their own fertilizer, and carry out biological pest control. A gardening culture has emerged, with food sovereignty as its primary goal. They do not seek large-scale plantations and monocultures. No one burns the garbage, and the diversity of the milpas reflects the concept of care: care for the family's food, the environment, and the community.                      

 

There are currently 35 productive initiatives, most of which are family-owned and run by women, including agricultural and poultry enterprises, clothing, shoes, cosmetics and lingerie production, among others. As part of the Solidarity Audits, visits are made by the Self-Monitoring Committee to strengthen skills in accounting and marketing, finance and organization.

 

The committee brings together the different groups and initiatives of the communities at the regional level, guaranteeing their representation; at the same time the committee guarantees access for all to new knowledge, feedback on local projects and dynamizing community life at the local level.                

 

Ahuachapán and Santa Ana are no exception to the rural exodus: most young people migrate to the city and abroad, preferably to the United States. The women of the collective have two open questions regarding their children. Through education, they avoid reproducing the classical and patriarchal role in their sons. At the same time, and especially from the self-saving groups as the main nucleus at the community level, they offer activities for children and adolescents, involving them in playful spaces and concrete activities in the processes of self-management, food sovereignty and sustainable agriculture. The challenge in all this is to correct the general negative image that living in the countryside is synonymous with a lack of opportunities. The second generation is already participating in the committee and in the local groups; the intergenerational aspect is in full swing.

 

 

As diverse as the productive enterprises in the different communities are, so too are the self-saving groups, in terms of the number of members, the volume of their capital, the volume of their portfolio, and their activities beyond saving and lending. One constant is that during the year almost all the capital is placed in the form of loans and the management of the money is controlled by two people.

 

There are agronomic promoters who produce and sell both Biol and Neem pesticides. Faced with the vicious circle of expensive agricultural inputs and low prices for their products, the women decided to prioritize food sovereignty in the face of unfavorable sales. Ena Vásquez shares: "In my community, we sell the food we produce, along with other items, in a small community supermarket; the motivation for us to buy there instead of in other places is that by buying in our small supermarket, we make sure that the profit stays with us and at the end of the year we share the profits”. Doña Ena is the head of her family, she has more than a thousand laying hens and distributes the egg production in her town on her motorcycle. Doña Ena's dynamism is something the women of the committee have in common: they don't stop!

 

The Committee and its local groups, with the support of the diocesan Caritas, have oriented their work and their desired future from a reading and conviction of abundance, overcoming scarcity as an emotional and motivational limiting factor in the search for the future. Starting from this abundance and putting into practice their conviction and ability to create new realities has become the path and the protagonism of women; or in the words of Marta Julia Puente: "We are liberal women". And, undoubtedly, empowered.

                 

When asked to express in a single word what the committee process means to people, there was a flood of words, some of which were: "happiness, knowledge, human fabric, unity, quality of life, hope, strength, independence, solidarity, pride, empathy, commitment, potential, harmony and coexistence".  And as lessons learned, the people gathered share with us: "Perseverance, faith, affective nurturing, desire for self-improvement, strengthening self-esteem, accepting ourselves as we are, tolerance". And as a moral:"The path is not easy, but it is not difficult either”.