SHARE's Programs

"For CRIPDES, part of our goal is to make sure women are represented on the council and have a voice within community organization. All women are capable here." -Marina Diaz,(CRIPDES-San Vicente)

Querid@s Amig@s,

It is a pleasure to express the wonderful experience I had volunteering from January to June 2006 in El Salvador with the SHARE Foundation. I was fortunate to work with various facets of SHARE mainly through their Grassroots and Local Development programs.

While working on an oral history project I gathered interviews from members of the women’s cooperatives that SHARE accompanies by providing trainings on women’s rights, gender relations, leadership development, literacy and administration. The responses given regarding SHARE’s solidarity within its Local Development target region, Ahuachapán, were impressive.

In addition to working with Local Development, I was teamed up with just one of the many regions in the Grassroots program, in San Vicente, where I worked with a partner organization to SHARE called the Association of Rural Communities for Development in El Salvador (CRIPDES). In writing articles about CRIPDES’ work I saw first hand the important community organization happening in the low-income rural areas where the majority of residents were resettled populations after being displaced during the Civil War.

The communities who are committed to solidarity relationships through SHARE’s Grassroots program in the San Vicente area serve to accompany women’s rights and youth projects through the work of CRIPDES. Promoters from CRIDPES support youth organization in theater, soccer tournaments, social functions and participation in the community council. CRIPDES also supports projects to extend women’s empowerment to involve local women in political and community organization. CRIPDES is often involved in workshops and demonstrations on gender relations and equal rights.

Working with SHARE and CRIPDES-San Vicente was a life changing experience for me. I felt blessed by the chance to wake up every day and walk with the people in their daily lives and in their struggle for justice in the midst of oppressed and impoverished settings. The projects and programs of SHARE provide a space in which the marginalized find hope to continue their struggle for equality. Although not everyone can spend large amounts of time volunteering for SHARE as I did, we all can continue to be in solidarity through supporting SHARE’s work, as sustainers of the struggle.

La Lucha Continua,

Noel Andersen

(Noel is in his last year of his Masters of Divinity at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, where he continues to work through SHARE’s Grassroots program to expand solidarity relationships between theological institutions and developing Salvadoran communities).