Advocacy Report on IFAD delegation to El Salvador
May 26-29, 2002
On
May 26th, Salvador from Los Angeles, Luis from DC, Rafael from New
York and 22 fellow Salvadoran Americans boarded airplanes for El Salvador.
This was a pioneering delegation in search of a creative way to invest
remittances in productive development in the Salvadoran countryside.
WHAT
IS SHARE’S CONNECTION TO THIS?
In November 2001 our Salvadoran partner CIDAR-
Advocacy Committee for Rural Development –(http://orbita.starmedia.com/cidar)
learned of two possible investment funds for the rural sector which
required cofinancing by the beneficiary communities. One fund was came from
the UN affiliated International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and
the second from the World Bank (WB). The IFAD proposal was already approved
by the Government of El Salvador (GOES), and was pending final approval by the
General Assembly. What IFAD needed was a strong interest to be demonstrated
for co-financing from the beneficiary communities. CIDAR and SHARE offered to
put IFAD in contact with members of Salvadoran Hometown Associations in the
US. These groups were already sending money to their Salvadoran hometowns and
could potentially be interested in seeing larger investment dollars spent in
these same communities by partnering with IFAD.
As in any new partnership it was important to get to know eachother. This trip to El Salvador was to learn about the project, speak to government officials, visit with farmers who have been part of former IFAD agricultural projects and hear from Non Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) offering technical assistance. The bottom line was information gathering and trust building.
A second objective was to introduce the delegation to the CIDAR leadership and have them explain the importance of parallel productive investment in the rural sector AND advocacy for a true national policy in support of the rural sector. Without a commitment to the rural sector all the individual investment projects in the world will not guarantee a future for small and medium sized farmers and small agri-business.
The visit opened with a full day of small group and plenary work.. IFAD www.ifad.org gave a presentation of their project called Programa de Reconstrucción y Modernización Rural – Program for Rural Reconstruction and Modernization .
In short: IFAD has been working on the revitalization projects of the Salvadoran rural sector primarily in former conflictive zones encompassing five departments (Ahuachapan, Chalatenango, La Libertad, Santa Ana and Sonsonate). Their target population has always been the poorest in this sector. The recent earthquakes have even further devastated these areas requiring a reconstruction and reactivation stimulus program to keep small farmers from losing their land and migrating to the cities. IFAD is proposing an investment fund of $20 million to be supplemented by $4.5 million from the Government of El Salvador (GOES) and $6.0 million from beneficiaries (possibly through remittances). The overall goal is to improve economic and social conditions of rural families. Specific objectives include: (I) improve on-farm and micro-enterprise productivity (ii) improve young people’s labor skills for the rural/urban labor markets (iii) consolidate economically oriented farmers’ and micro-entrepreneurs’ organizations (iv) promote gender balance by ensuring equal opportunities for women in all program activities and (v) improve the government’s framework for poverty alleviation and agricultural and rural development.
The Salvadoran American groups each gave a short outline of their respective organizations and current work. Luis Romero, CUS/CARECEN romerolf@msn.com representing Washington DC. Danny Martinez representing SAMD of southern Maryland. Jaime Penate and Salvador Sanabria representing El Rescate www.elrescate.org of Los Angeles and Rafael Flores representing ASALI ralphflor@aol.com of Long Island NY.
The small group’s discussion centered on:
1) mechanisms of co-financing development projects both agricultural and off-farm small businesses
2) conditions necessary to assure sustainable projects
3) local community willingness to co-invest in projects, e.g. with remittances
4) the feasibility of finding other sources of local credit
In plenary, the observations were as follows:
a) There is an interest in supporting productive rural projects.
b) It is important to finance the poorest farmers. There is no other way for them to get access to credit.
c) There was no experience with use of remittances for productive development. Remesas so far have generally been family to family. The process of doing community productive investment will require time, education and confidence building.
Our field visits gave the delegation an opportunity to speak to beneficiaries and members of the organizations that provided technical assistance. We traveled to Las Pilas, Los Planes, Rio Chiquito, San Ignacio in Chalatenango and visited with members of the ACOPROSAVI coop in San Vicente.
These projects were examples of small farmers organized into cooperatives producing organic vegetables, chilis and on a lesser scale poultry. There were two off farm business ventures . Investment in 6 small general stores (tiendas) and 2 community corn grinding shops. Based on the project design the small farmers received loans through IFAD plus free technical assistance. In 4 years they shifted from growing staple corn and beans crops to marketable crops and vegetables which were sold to supermarkets and restaurants in San Salvador and the central market in Chalatenango. Their dream of competing in the regional markets of Central America and even within the US market still seems a distant reality.
The current IFAD project successes were:
The transfer of knowledge through technical assistance
The ability to organize as a cooperative
The production of their own organic fertilizer
The production of high quality organic lettuce, carrots, peppers and other vegetables with a yearly schedule of 4 successive plantings
Built and maintained a washing and storage center for the vegetables that met national handling and processing standards
The remaining problems are:
Lack of sufficient markets,
Lack of good roads to get products to market
Lack of a truck owned by the coop to transport products. They now have to contract with a trucker
Hurricane Mitch which wiped out their early work and put them in debt.
Lack of accessible local credit
No support for the rural sector on behalf of the national government
In closing we met for a final plenary session to discuss what conclusions we could draw from the visits and identify “next steps”.
OUTCOMES
FIDA’s commitments:
1. IFAD has agreed to prepare a memorandum that will explain:
a). What is understood as the structure of the project.
b). What is meant by “co-investment” on the part of the communities
c). Through which financial channels will the co-investment funds be handled
d). What is envisioned as the role of the US Salvadoran immigrant groups in the design and execution of the project?
2. Plan follow-up meetings in each of the participating US cities to explainIFAD’s proposal to a larger audience of Salvadoran Americans.
3. Prepare an agreement betweenIFAD and a US/Salvadoran Hometown Association for a pilot project to be based in one of the 7 Departments in whichIFAD works (Morazan, San Vicente, Chalatenango, Santa Ana, Ahuachapan, Sonsonate and La Libertad).
Salvadoran/American commitments:
1. Present delegation findings to larger base at meetings in each city of the US.
2. Convene a meeting of US Hometown Associations to explore the possibility of forming one national organization.
The SHARE Foundation will continue to act as a liaison between IFAD and the Hometown Associations until such time as the Associations define their new national relationship and designate their own representative.
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Email us at sharesf@share-elsalvador.org
