FUNDAHMER’s tour in the US is off to a great start! After visiting four high schools in California and Arizona, José and Laurel are wrapping up their visit to the West Coast with two community conversations in Portland, Oregon, organized by FACES’ board president, Amanda, and the local Salvadoran community. For an update on the first week of the tour, check out Jose and Laurel’s report on FUNDAHMER’s blog here.

We are also excited to annouce FUNDAHMER’s tour fundraising campaign, to support current financial needs in El Salvador. Donations can be accepted at any stop along the tour or HERE, through Indiegogo, an online crowdsourcing and fundraising platform. Our goal for the online campaign is $10,000, and any amount helps! If you cannot donate, we invite you to share this link with members of your community who may be interested. All funds directly support three specific initiatives:

1. Emergency grain fund – This year, there was a 35-day drought during the months of July and August, during the first crop of corn. The first crop of corn is usually the most plentiful and is important to small subsistence farmers, who depend upon a good harvest to pay back agricultural loans and feed themselves and their families during the year. Almost the entire first crop in Morazán was lost during the drought, and we are raising funds to try to send a couple emergency food packages to communities over the course of the next year. $25 buys a quintal of corn (100 pounds… the prices are already double the norm!), and $168.75 could cover three emergency food packages (corn and beans) for a family over the coming year.

2. Campesino School – After FUNDAHMER’s pilot run of Campesino School this year, we are hoping to move the effort out to Morazán, to involve more young women and cut down on the food and transportation costs! This means we will need to construct some basic infrastructure on the land out in Morazán and work with our agriculture promotors in the area, Agustín and Nohemí, to make a farm plan and begin working the land. We hope to build an open-air structure for making organic fertilizer and storing barrels of fermenting microorganisms, a small water basin or tank for washing, cooking, and watering crops, as well as a storage room or a small house for storing tools, seed, and didactic materials. Eventually, we hope to develop the land into a community agricultural center, but those are our short-term goals for 2015. For more information on Campesino School, feel free to email FUNDAHMER or check out some blog posts from this year’s experience here.

3. Women’s economic initiatives – FUNDAHMER currently works with three intergenerational women´s groups in Morazán and La Libertad that are constructing “economies of solidarity” in their communities by forming artisan collectives to meet local needs. The women of Flor de Maíz weave handbags out of yarn and the fibers of the mezcal plant, used traditionally to make hammocks and sacks. The women in Las Mesas make shampoo and run a small store and grain mill in their community, and the women in Sacacoyo make artisanal sweets, pickles, and powdered drink mixes. They also make cards our of flowers, leaves, banana tree bark, and corn husks! We are looking for about $500 or $600 to make an artisanal oven for bread-making for Flor de Maíz in Morazán, as well as support for the women to access craft fairs and markets in El Salvador.

Finally, check out a great interview with José published in a populist, grassroots newspaper in Portland here!