We are uniting with our sister organization, FUNDAHMER, to address the impact of two crises to hit El Salvador in the year 2020: the COVID-19 pandemic and the tropical storms Amanda and Cristóbal.

When countries around the world began to respond to COVID-19, El Salvador quickly instituted mandatory quarantine-at-home for residents and citizens, closed its borders, and isolated anyone returning home from abroad to “contamination centers” for 30 days. This has meant that many families, like families across the globe, have lost already-tenuous employment, and children have been struggling to adjust to school online. Open-air markets, where many people buy food at lower prices than at grocery stores, have been closed, and Salvadorans are assigned a particular day or days during the week when they can leave home to buy groceries or medicine, according to their national ID number. Many students have struggled to keep up with their peers, especially in rural areas where cell phones using a very weak signal are the only connection to classes and the only way to access and turn in assignments.

On top of this reality, two tropical storms, Amanda and Cristóbal, have damaged houses and crops in late May-early June. A large part of cultivated corn, sorghum, vegetables, and domestic animals have been eliminated, and many houses and access roads have been destroyed.

In response to these realities, FUNDAHMER is reaching out to the communities and individuals that have visited the communities over the years, as well as other partner organizations, with the goal of providing families with emergency food supplies and basic medicines. This project also hopes to address medium- and long-term ways to support the communities, like rebuilding roads, attending to communities’ emotional and mental health, and strengthening internet infrastructure for rural students.