Regional Update: PROGRESO – April 30, 2007

April 30, 2007
PROGRESO Monthly Update #1

Introduction: 
 This document is the second in a series of monthly updates on the work of the PROGRESO, the regional branch of CRIPDES, and documenting the social, political, economic and cultural panorama in Suchitoto.  PROGRESO, with support from U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities local staff, has decided to share in this format news about its activities as well as reflections, reactions and analysis.  These updates are written first and foremost to share with Sister Cities in the USA who are partnered with organized communities in PROGRESO, but should also be suitable for general distribution.  Information was presented to me in an informal and open style, a veritable barrage of activities and alliances that were persistently and patiently mapped out over the course of 90 minutes of talking and intense note-taking.  It was such an energizing and invigorating break from the formality that often obscures the exciting nature of all the good work going on the author has decided to present the information below in much that same format.

–           Jesse Kates-Chinoy,
      Sister Cities E.S. Staff

 

Youth Organizing
The PROGRESO youth program looks to grow stronger, and held a regional assembly in March, inviting representatives from each organized youth group in the 23 communities where PROGRESO works.  In the regional representative assembly the participants elected a 5 person Regional Youth Committee to work in conjunction with the PROGRESO youth organizer, Fernando Lopez Menjívar.  This assembly and the formation of the committee is part of the Youth and Sistering Project that the sister city committees are supporting this year. 

In the meantime Fernando has been carrying out his constant work of accompanying and organizing the youth in the communities, helping the young people hold assemblies and elect youth committees where they do not exist, and helping the new committees make work plans, projections, and carry out trainings and education to mobilize their communities.

To strengthen the organized youth groups in the communities, PROGRESO is implementing a project this year of micro-credits to the youth groups of 8 organized communities.  Through this project youth committees will each be given a small fund with which to carry out different activities as organized youth, whether it means workshops or activities within the communities, a travel fund to participate in national mobilizations, or trips to visit other groups.  The group will also carry out activities to raise that money back, through trips, raffles, tournaments, dances, etc., and at the end of 1 year the money will be passed on to the next youth group in the next community.   

On a municipal level, PROGRESO youth organizers have been active leaders in the “Youth Coordination of Suchitoto”, a coalition of youth groups in the area.  This coordination has put together a plan of activities that are based on the Municipal Youth Platform that PROGRESO helped to put together 3 years ago through a series of consults and workshops with youth from all the different communities.  Activities are now focused in the areas of Arts and Culture, Environment, Historical Memory, and Health.

The representatives from the PROGRESO youth organizing program also participate with the youth leaders from the 4 surrounding municipalities in a “Micro-Regional” youth coordinating team. 

As part of a continuous process of education and formation of youth leaders, PROGRESO has sent 6 youth leaders (including Fernando and the PROGRESO sistering coordinator, Francisco Martinez from El Papaturro) to a youth leadership formation and training school.  These trainings are on the topics of: Power Relationships, Capitalism and Patriarchy, Tools to Change Power Dynamics, Relations, Communications and Conflict Resolution. 
 

Women’s Organizing
The PROGRESO women’s organizer continues to support the formation and development of women’s committees in each of the 23 organized communities that make up PROGRESO.  One project being implemented is the “livestock bank” project, described in the first PROGRESO update.  (Read that here.)  The gist is that in each community 5 women receive a pregnant cow, and after the calf is born and weaned they must give the calf away to another woman in the community (selected by the community council and women’s group) and pay 15% of the value of the cow back into the project.  The project is progressing well, as the first offspring are being weaned, and women are starting to give the calves on to the next women. 

Another project that PROGRESO is implementing is a micro-credit program to women’s groups and individuals in the rural communities.  Each woman in the program receives a small fund to invest personally.  This money goes to support women’s economic autonomy in their families, and must be paid back, eventually.  Women pay $5 per year in interest.  The program is run by a regional micro-credit committee, put together and trained by PROGRESO.  The money paid back into the project will stay in the communities, and be re-loaned out. 

On a regional level, the organized women’s committees are coming together to coordinate education and political advocacy.  PROGRESO coordinates regional meetings of the committee leaders from each of the committees, where an average of 17 representatives from the women’s groups come together to coordinate work and create a collective analysis of the situation for women in the communities.

The PROGRESO regional women’s organizing program collaborates with other efforts for women’s organizing through the Women’s Coalition of Suchitoto (Concertación de Mujeres de Suchitoto.)     The concertación was formed in 1990 as the Cuscatlán Women’s Movement, and subsequently grew into what it is now.  Over the years through it the women of the rural communities have had the power to enact structural and political change on the local level.  In 1994 through their pressure the first women were elected to the City Council as secondary representatives, and in 1997 as primary representatives.  The women of the Concertación organized to create, demand, and finally win a Municipal Gender Policy to be enacted by City Government.    This policy includes the creation of a Municipal Women’s Office, an autonomous process of selection of a city councilwoman expressly to represent the women of the municipality, and twice-yearly municipal open meetings where the women of the rural communities can (and do!) all travel to the urban center to one by one express the needs and demands of the rural communities directly to the Mayor and City Council.  These are successes of the Women’s Coalition of Suchitoto. 

Through the Women’s Coalition PROGRESO is participating in the implementation of a 3 year project for women’s organizing in the 76 communities of Suchitoto.  The project includes visits to all of the communities and formation of community and multi-community wide women’s organizing groups.  On top of that, the project comprehends several stages of leadership formation and trainings, as well as economic initiatives oriented toward women in the rural communities. 

HIV-AIDS Program
PROGRESO’s work carrying out an HIV-AIDS prevention and support program continues, as PROGRESO organizers carry out monthly meeting with the group of HIV+ youth they have been supporting. 

Also, PROGRESO organizers, along with volunteers from the youth group have been carrying out an ongoing educational and prevention campaign, giving talks in community schools, assemblies, youth groups, and other venues in Suchitoto and the neighboring municipality of Tenancingo.  These workshops are on prevention, dialogue, and conflict transformation, to young people and their families.

As well, the HIV+ group continues to work with the Cattle Bank project, together with their families, and the first offspring have been successfully passed on to others in the communities. 

Finally, PROGRESO organizers have been continuously visiting affected youth, giving moral support, references, and accompanying them to find access to medicine.
 

Health Program
The PROGRESO health project, with the support from an allied health organization called PRO-VIDA, (not an anti-abortion organization) is in full swing, working with health promoters from 8 communities in Suchitoto.  Lorenza Pichinte, the PROGRESO organizer in charge of the project has been working to implement a series of trainings with these community promoters, on themes of community health and hygiene.  They have been successful, but the promoters, and Lorenza, coincide that they are not enough. 

The community health promoters, amateur and unpaid yet highly skilled nurses from the communities themselves, find that they need less trainings on hygiene than they need economic and material resources to support the volunteer promoters and equip and supply the community clinics.

The health promoters have decided to try together to find resources for a reproductive rights project to implement throughout the communities, and funding to give small stipends to the health workers so that they can give a more adequate attention to the communities. 

At the same time, the health promoters are dutifully carrying out and taking advantage of the current health project, hopefully as a stepping stone toward the kind of support that they most need.
 

Regional Initiatives
PROGRESO is coordinating with a nearby and allied organization called Paz y Bien to implement a project to support family food sovereignty through house garden plots.  Families from selected communities receive plants, organic fertilizer and tech support to plant fruit trees and vegetables on their house plots, first for family consumption, and with the surplus for sale.

In addition, PROGRESO maintains and actively participates in the social and organizing networks on a regional and national level.  As a part of the Cuscatlán-Cabañas Micro-Region the local Suchitoto organizers come together with the people’s organizations (mostly also affiliated with CRIPDES) from surrounding municipalities.    PROGRESO, along with the 4 other municipalities of the micro-region (Cinquera, Tenancingo, Tejutepeque and Jutiapa) have come together to throw their political and social weight behind an advocacy initiative in Tejutepeque:  The inhabitants of Tejutepeque pay inflated water bills, but most of the time have no running water in their homes because of faulty pipes, poor pressure, or a host of other failures of the National Water System, ANDA.  In addition to pressuring ANDA to fix problems for the rural population and change the billing system, the organizers also see the situation as a part of the campaign to privatize the water system (as described above), and held a public forum in Tejutepeque to demand a solution to the water problem, but also do public outreach and education about the issues at hand, and shout a resounding “no!” to water privatization. 

Also together with the other municipalities of the Micro-Region, PROGRESO is helping to organize municipal environmental brigades, strongly anchored by youth, for environmental protection throughout the rural communities. 

Another one of the relationships that PROGRESO maintains is with the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, FMLN, and its official regional organizational structures.  The stated goal of PROGRESO in coordination with the Party is to ensure that their decision-making processes and goals are shaped by contact with its own grassroots base, made up mostly by rural communities, including the 23 that they work with. 

PROGRESO represents an important part of CRIPDES organizing on a national level, as well as the broad coalition of social movement groups, the Popular Resistance Movement, October 12: “MPR-12.”  To this end, PROGRESO has been participating actively in the CRIPDES National strategic planning process (mirroring the Sister Cities Strategic Planning Process), and the national meetings of the MPR-12.  In these national social movement meetings they dialogue and create a collective analysis of the current national context, coordinate mobilizations and advocacy activities, and combine political (party and grassroots) strategy.
 

Political Advocacy
PROGRESO has been an active player in the struggle against mineral mining in the provinces of Chalatenango and Cabañas in El Salvador.  In April PROGRESO organizers participated in a mobilization of the affected rural communities into one of the more advanced mining sites in Cabañas.  An estimated 1200 people took over the site, disabling the mining machinery as 20 privately hired security guards watched, unable to stop the (rightfully!) angry protesters.  For more on mineral mining in El Salvador, check out the rest of the sister cities website (www.elsalvadorsolidarity.org.)
 

PROGRESO also will mobilize organizers and community members to participate in the May 1^st march in San Salvador to send a message of strength and celebrate International Worker’s Day.  Activities include a massive march into San Salvador, for which PROGRESO plans to move 2 busloads of people from the communities made up of small delegations from each community such that each of the 23 communities is represented.  (Editor’s Note: the May 1 march was a big success, snaking through San Salvador with an estimated nearly 70,000 people.  The march was so long that the when first marchers had reached the public square where they would have their final concentration, the end of the march had yet to leave from its beginning point.  Check out more details on the Sister Cities website, under “North-South Updates” and then “El Salvador Updates.”
 

Sistering Program
PROGRESO organizer Francisco Martinez has been working specially with the communities that have Sister City relationships with cities in the U.S. (El Barillo, La Bermuda, El Papaturro, Agua Caliente).  The first step in this process has been to make sure that in each of the communities the Community Council has designated a Sistering Coordinator, to assure the sound coordination and communication with the community’s corresponding sister city committee.  Francisco is planning bi-monthly meetings with each Community Council President and Sistering Coordinator to share experiences, and with the hopes of facilitating good communication and follow up.

 
As well, Francisco and myself have been visiting the communities and accompanying the Community Councils and other community leaders in participating in the Sister Cities National Strategic Planning process.  It has been important and enlightening, and we invite you all to continue participating in this process as well to help re-build a strong, important and effective movement in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in PROGRESO, La Bermuda, El Papaturro, Agua Caliente, El Barillo and the rest of El Salvador!