July
2004
Dear Friends,
We have received a number of responses to our
May Sustainer letter which talked about Mujeres
Ganaderas (MUGAN), the women’s cattle
cooperative in Usulatan, El Salvador. As a grassroots
organization, we welcome your comments and concerns
about SHARE’s work in El Salvador and
see this as an opportunity to clarify how we
are working together towards a shared vision
of social and economic justice in El Salvador.
As you know SHARE supports women in developing
their own enterprises and one of them is the
cattle cooperative of MUGAN which is completely
owned and operated by rural women. A concern
has been raised about the ways that cattle production
challenges the environment and the waste involved
in feeding cattle for beef instead of using
the land for production lower on the food chain.
I will be the first one to agree with not supporting
large cattle production.
However, what we are supporting in El Salvador
are poor families who buy two calves to raise.
The coop supports them with technical assistance
to keep the animals healthy and methods to produce
storage food for the dry season. The families
raise a few chickens and pigs as well. These
are families that have received a small piece
of land as part of the agrarian reform after
the war. On that land they cultivate the basics
to feed their family and sell a bit to the local
market. They have been successful in pooling
resources to produce organic papayas, bananas,
yucca, sesame, vegetables, as well as cashew
nuts for the local and national market.
The cows produce milk to improve the diet of
the family, especially children that tend to
be malnourished in many communities of El Salvador.
They also use the cow and chicken manure to
produce organic fertilizers to enrich the soil.
These are the same families that organized
to pressure the Salvadoran government to build
the levee to protect them from floods. And the
same families that are marching to San Salvador
to denounce the signing of the free trade agreement
that will bring milk and meat from large international
producers and destroy the local market.
We search for the balance of success in the
projects with the well-being of the whole community
as a priority. The process to support a local
organization in El Salvador pass through a number
of steps to guarantee that the project is concerned
with a number of issues including promotion
of democratic civic participation, gender awareness,
leadership development and respect for the environment.
SHARE program staff visits
the community periodically and evaluates the
progress of the projects as well as recommends
measures to improve the results along the way.
We appreciate that supporters of SHARE are
concerned with our practice and our results.
We look for supporters to be in touch with our
work and intentionally bring 12 to 15 delegations
a year to El Salvador to visit our partners.
In each of this visit we receive feedback that
we take very seriously.
I would like to invite each of you to consider
coming to El Salvador for the 25th anniversary
of Monsenor Romero March 28 to April 5, 2005.
Once again, thank you for all the ways we are
striving together to do our best in accompanying
our brothers and sisters in El Salvador.
Un abrazo,
Jose Artiga
Executive Director
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Campaign for Peace