ISCOS’ solidarity project in El Salvador improves the lives of thousands of people

On 17 November 2022, the headquarters of ISCOS in El Salvador received Patricia Callejas, the contact person of the EU Delegation to El Salvador, to whom Iscos presented the results of an EU-financed project in the country.

The objective of the visit of Ms. Callejas was to monitor the ISCOS’ project “Strengthening of the Southern Wetland OSC of Cerron Grande in its climate change adaptation and mitigation activities”, which will come to an end on 31 December.

As part of this monitoring exercise, ISCOS accompanied the EU representative to five rural communities in the municipality of Suchitoto, where the EU representative had the chance to meet with several beneficiaries of the project, with a paritcular attention paid to five women-managed Household Production Units (HPUs) and three Community Water Systems.

Project results

The visits enabled Ms. Callejas to see first-hand the results of the project for each of its three key components, namely:

  1. Strengthening the spaces for concertation on environmental issues. Francisco Martínez, president of the Comité Local RAMSAR, presented the process of strengthening the organisation of the local project partners, through the participatory elaboration of strategic and operational planning tools and internal regulations. These tools will make it possible to act more effectively in the process of formulating public policies for the sustainable management of natural resources.
  2. Regeneration of ecosystems and landscape with emphasis on agroecology. The 50 Household Production Units (HPU) involved in the project are now able to ensure the food security of the families residing in the eight communities of the Municipality of Suchitoto. The improvement of production in the HPUs was made possible thanks to training courses based on the agroecological principles and techniques of the "Farmer to farmer" methodology, thanks to which participants in the project have successfully applied agroecological diversification with vegetables, fruit trees, modules for the production of eggs and poultry, and rainwater collection tanks for the production of tilapia.
  3. Governance and strengthening of the community water systems. As part of Suchitoto Municipality’s water systems, the 32 Juntas de Agua that are currently in place play a fundamental role in providing drinking water for 4,000 families residing in the rural region. However, many of these systems suffer from deficiencies related to their administrative and technical management. In this sense, the project has strengthened the management capabilities of the Juntas de Agua from an organisational, administrative and technical point of view, enabling them to offer their service more effectively and efficiently.

This project represents an important element of ISCOS’ strategy in El Salvador, which is centred on the sustainable management of natural resources. Iscos’ work will continue through the implementation of the second phase of this project, which is currently running in parallel since 1 December 2022 and will end in December 2023 thanks to the financing of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region in Italy, and with the project Lempa Vivo.