From education to the environment to the empowerment of girls and youth, VOICES continues to work actively for the just development of El Salvador’s most marginalized.
Read about this and more in our latest quarterly report!
Desde la educación, al MedioAmbiente hasta al empoderamiento de las niñas y jovenes, VOCES sigue trabajando activamente por el desarrollo justo de los más marginados de El Salvador.
Lea sobre esto y más, en nuestro último informe trimestral!
| 🎙️ Prevention, Attention and Activism: Grassroots Feminism in El Salvador SEPTEMBER 29 | 7PM (El Salvador) |
| Join us this week for a conversation with the Morazán Women’s Network, a regionally and internationally recognized organization for its impeccable work to promote equality and eliminate discrimination and violence against women in their region and beyond. ~ Prevention The work The Network is doing around youth development, drawing on both the ECHO model and popular education, to increase self-esteem and self-worth while preparing these young women to identify, confront and reject gender-based violence. ~ Attention The work The Network is doing in the area of comprehensive accompaniment of victims and their families, with special attention to trauma-informed care programs and their real-life impacts. ~ Activism The work The Network is doing in the area of providing legal aid, legal advocacy, and victim’s rights activism as well as the current reality of justice and the hopes for the future. —– You can join Thursday’s conversation via Zoom by pre-registering for an access code @ bit.ly/3cZAbQl or watch it live on Facebook. |
| OUR PANEL |
| Melida Avila – Vice President; Social Work and Healing + Idalia Claros – Secretary; Advocacy and Victim’s Accompaniment + Martiza Argueta – Treasurer; Sex-Ed and Youth Development Simultaneous english interpretation will be available via the Zoom meeting. A recording of the event will be made available. |
From education to the environment to the empowerment of girls and youth, VOICES continues to work actively for the just development of El Salvador’s most marginalized peoples.
Read about this and more in our latest quarterly report!
Desde la educación, al MedioAmbiente hasta al empoderamiento de las niñas y jovenes, VOICES sigue trabajando activamente por el desarrollo justo de los pueblos más marginados de El Salvador.
Lea sobre esto y más, en nuestro último informe trimestral!
This first quarter of 2022 Voices on the Border been very busy, we’ve helped to protected schools, students and teachers, bring youth initiatives together, expand our accompaniment, train teachers, support victims of violence in their healing process and even hosted a successful virtual Solidarity Festival.
CLICK HERE to read more!
Este primer trimestre de 2022 Voces en la Frontera ha estado muy ocupado, hemos ayudado a proteger escuelas, a reunir iniciativas juveniles, a ampliar nuestro acompañamiento, a formar a profesores, a apoyar a las víctimas de la violencia en su proceso de curación e incluso a organizar un exitoso Festival Solidario virtual.
HAGA CLIC AQUÍ para leer más!
You are cordially invited to a very intriguing conversation with Salvadoran experts, tomorrow evening. The topics we will be discuss are the Current state of Politics and Freedom of Expression in El Salvador.
If you want to directly contribute via the Zoom meeting, pre-register @ shorturl.at/goqR5
We can’t wait to see you!
Están cordialmente invitad@s a una conversación muy intrigante con expertos salvadoreños, esta noche. Los temas que trataremos son el estado actual de la política y la libertad de expresión en El Salvador.
Si desean contribuir directamente a través de la reunion de Zoom, preinscríbase @ shorturl.at/goqR5
¡Estamos ansiosos por verte!
Nuestra organización incluye la palabra “frontera” en ella, porque nacimos en la frontera de Honduras y El Salvador, en un campo de refugiados llamado Colomoncagua.
Nuestros fundadores norteamerican@s fueron trabajadores humanitarios en el campamento, nuestros fundadores fueron médicos en plena guerra, nuestros fundadores fueron dadores de santuario, que arriesgaron sus vidas para exponer la verdad y ayudar al pueblo salvadoreño.
Ya se trate de escudos humanos, infraestructura a gran escala, legalización de tierras, financiación de bancos comunitarios … Para VOCES, todo comenzó allí. Para VOCES, el acompañamiento sigue siendo todo.
Our organization includes the word “border” in it, because we were born on the border of Honduras and El Salvador, in a refugee camp called Colomoncagua.
Our North American founders were humanitarian workers in the camp, our founders were doctors in the midst of war, our founders were sanctuary givers, who risked their lives to expose the truth and help the Salvadoran people.
Whether it’s human shields, large-scale infrastructure, land legalization, community bank financing … For VOCES, it all started there. For VOCES, accompaniment is still everything.
Socially speaking, El Salvador was already deteriorating before COVID-19 hit, owing to rising rates of poverty and extreme poverty, the persistence of inequalities and growing social discontent. In this context, the pandemic was to inevitably have a profoundly negative impact on various social sectors, particularly public health and education.
Even before the pandemic, VOICES has been working with rural schools and families in an attempt to radically improve the culture of learning throughout these regions, by identifying and addressing major gaps in educational outcomes. Since the pandemic began, we’ve been supporting initiatives that deploy distance learning modalities through a variety of formats and platforms (both on and off-line), while also supporting the mobilization of education personnel and students and helping these institutions stay equipped with the necessary biomedical resources to ensure the overall well-being of students and their families.
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Building a Dignified Learning Environment
Isla de Monte Cristo, Bahia del Jiquilisco
In 1992, the Island of Monte Cristo was resettled by local farmers taking advantage of the postwar land transfer program. Today, the remote community contains acres of fruit trees, a handful of farming families, and hundreds of nesting birds.
Due to years of abandonment by both local and the national government, organizations like VOICES have been approached by local leaders to help them tackle specific issues like their lack of vital resources such as potable water and access to education.
Thanks in part to the generosity of South Bay Sanctuary Covenant, and the efforts of the islanders themselves in managing the logistics, the transportation of materials and the labor, their small school is in the middle of a complete makeover.
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Rural Mobile Technology Lab
Centro Escolar Amando Lopez, Bajo Lempa, Usulután
The Mobile Tech Lab began in 2020, in response to the official closure of all Salvadoran educational institutions. Luckily for the kids, the Amando Lopez School staff have always been at the forefront of developing creative initiatives to entice students and keep communities learning.
The Lab is helping bridge the digital divide in the Bajo Lempa, by offering direct technology to students and computer skills to teachers. 112 students are currently taking part in the Lab, by attending in-person or virtual classes in communities Amando Lopez, La Canoa and 14th de Abril. The teaching staff continue to say that their goals are being accomplished through this program, goals such as keeping students and teachers connected, providing students the critical technological tools they need to succeed and strengthening the technical capabilities of the teachers.
It is also important to note that because of the school’s stringent biohealth approach, Amando Lopez has become a model for other institutions who wish to teach kids, during a global pandemic.
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Early Childhood Education Improvement
Bajo Lempa Preschools, Usulután
Preschool teachers are critical agents of children’s social and emotional development, which in turn is a key predictor of their current and future academic and social success. Rural pre-schoools in El Salvador however are notorious for being left of the equation when it comes to government funding around paying dignified salaries, operational budgets, building infrastructures, etc.
For VOICES, it is important to support these institutions in their educational proceses by helping to supplement these shortcomings and offering them quality continuing education workshops with pedagogical professionals.
Recently, we worked with five different preschools in the Bajo Lempa to facilitate a series of highly interactive age and developmentally appropriate activities aimed at improving the methodological foundations of their curriculum and internal organizations.
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We want to reiterate our gratitude for our dear friends from South Bay Sanctuary Covenant of Northern California, St.John of God Church of San Francisco, the Carlos Rosario International school family in Washington D.C. and generous individuals and families who continue to understand the need for providing quality education in the middle of a pandemic. If it weren’t for each and everyone of you and the dedication and perseverance of our Salvadoran patterns, who knows how many bright young futures would be stifled and lost.
Don’t have your ticket for our upcoming Solidarity Concert? Click Here!
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Giving always feels good, but it feels even better when you know that your donations are helping small yet effective organizations like ours, strategically forecast their funding, budget their finances and plan future projects and initiatives. As we grow, your monthly gifts will help us stay fiscally healthy and predictable, allowing staff and our partners to focus on the job(s) at hand.
HATS OFF! to all the fantastic Frontline Healthcare Workers worldwide– who through their dedication, hard work, sacrifice and an adherence to a certain oath, are helping to save humankind as we know it.
Today especially, we recognize the bravery that’s being required of these #UnsungHeroes, who despite politics and bureaucracy, continue to fervently provide essential health services to anyone in need, even as a virulent pandemic looms across the globe.
We hope that your governments, institutions and communities are finding ways to support you, by giving you what you need to stay safe and sane.
To everyone else out there, if you can.. #StayHome, so that they can come home.
Voices on the Border 