“We are farmers, we are leaders, we are mothers, we are wives”, is the testimony of the members of the Self-Monitoring Committee, an intercommunal articulation of rural women from 18 communities in the departments of Santa Ana and Ahuachapán in El Salvador. These women have been able to turn the tables. They told us: “Only men can build houses and we started building houses”. And they add: “Here we are putting an end to patriarchy”.
We learned what belonged to men
As a result of the training and monthly meetings in many of the communities, self-saving groups were formed. The Self-Monitoring Committee grew out of the monthly meetings of the female leaders of these local groups. Similarly, other support committees were formed during the process to address specific issues, such as the Family Support Committee, which provides support for productive initiatives and entrepreneurship. At the same time, promoter committees were created. The starting point for the Self-Saving Groups was a small start-up capital provided by Caritas, which stimulated the savings of the group members. As soon as the group’s stability and discipline in saving is proven, the participants can lend money from the group’s fund, which allows them to carry out productive initiatives, whether in agriculture or in other sectors such as clothing production, cosmetics and others.
The training covers several topics: ecological agriculture, savings, children and youth, housing, productive initiatives, water treatment, energy-saving stoves, among others. The training goes hand in hand with practical implementation, with visits and exchange of experiences. Laura García, one of the most dynamic members of the collective, recalls: “The men didn’t think it was important, neither the topics nor our meetings, but we learned what was important for the men”. Jasmin Velásquez, another committee member, recalls what happened when she put into practice what she had learned about growing tomatoes. Neighbors saw Jasmin’s tomato plants and said to her husband, “Your wife has beaten you”.
Role and Empowerment
Take on new roles and you will achieve attitudinal change in others. Women, with self-savings, generating their own income and new knowledge in seemingly male domains show this.
Self-savings
Families in El Salvador typically save what little they can in traditional banks. The banks invest the capital they collect and make profits that never reach the savers who own the money. The interest paid by the banks on savings is minimal, and in some cases, they have to pay to keep their money. The women in the self-savings groups have broken with this tradition through a personal transformation: replacing the paradigm of traditional bank savings with community savings. Guillermo Navarro of Caritas Nacional shares his thoughts: “Since the groups are composed mainly of women, they become a mechanism for women who save to achieve economic independence from their husbands, thus establishing more equitable relationships. This gives them greater self-esteem and self-confidence. The self-savings groups are a means of solving daily needs of various kinds for families who come in search of credit, but they are also a means of stimulating or encouraging the creation of community productive initiatives”.
Cascades of knowledge
During this process, which has been going more than 20 years, the number of groups in the different communities has increased and not all of them have the direct support of Caritas and its training centers. Faced with this situation, and thanks to the intercommunal articulation of the groups, grouped in the Self-Monitoring Committee, a modus operandi has been chosen: with the support of Caritas, promoters are trained in the fields of agriculture and housing, most of them women. The promoters not only put into practice what they have learned, but also share their knowledge with interested people in their communities. Thanks to this cascading replication, the knowledge reaches a much larger number of people.
Talents and Initiatives
Don’t restrict your imagination by thinking and dreaming from scarcity and problems. Take the path of women, thinking and feeling from abundance to build new realities, greater equity and better self-esteem.
Solidarity Audits
The committee brings together the different groups and initiatives of the communities at the regional level, guaranteeing their representation; at the same time the committee guarantees access for all to new knowledge, feedback on local projects and dynamizing community life at the local level.
Diversity, abundance and protagonism
There are agronomic promoters who produce and sell both Biol and Neem pesticides. Faced with the vicious circle of expensive agricultural inputs and low prices for their products, the women decided to prioritize food sovereignty in the face of unfavorable sales. Ena Vásquez shares: “In my community, we sell the food we produce, along with other items, in a small community supermarket; the motivation for us to buy there instead of in other places is that by buying in our small supermarket, we make sure that the profit stays with us and at the end of the year we share the profits”. Doña Ena is the head of her family, she has more than a thousand laying hens and distributes the egg production in her town on her motorcycle. Doña Ena’s dynamism is something the women of the committee have in common: they don’t stop!
Entrepreneurship and Well-Being
The Committee and its local groups, with the support of the diocesan Caritas, have oriented their work and their desired future from a reading and conviction of abundance, overcoming scarcity as an emotional and motivational limiting factor in the search for the future. Starting from this abundance and putting into practice their conviction and ability to create new realities has become the path and the protagonism of women; or in the words of Marta Julia Puente: “We are liberal women”. And, undoubtedly, empowered.
Mind maps and a recipe for success
When asked to express in a single word what the committee process means to people, there was a flood of words, some of which were: “happiness, knowledge, human fabric, unity, quality of life, hope, strength, independence, solidarity, pride, empathy, commitment, potential, harmony and coexistence”. And as lessons learned, the people gathered share with us: “Perseverance, faith, affective nurturing, desire for self-improvement, strengthening self-esteem, accepting ourselves as we are, tolerance”. And as a moral: “The path is not easy, but it is not difficult either”.
What other tips do you apply in your empowerment process? Leave us a message on our social networks to share it with the community!
Messages to the Future
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“From the moment we realized that we are capable of much more than what we have always been told, we have not stopped”. When new knowledge and organizational accompaniment intersect with people’s protagonism and autonomy, self-determination is born and the implementation of the creation of new realities.
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Authors:
- Jorge Krekeler / jorge.krekeler@posteo.de
Design:
- Gabriela Avendaño.
Photos:
- Caritas Santa Ana
- Jorge Krekeler
Contact information regarding the documented experience:
- Self-Monitoring Committee
c/o Caritas Diocese of Santa Ana
- Email: caritassangtaana@yahoo.es
- Facebook: caritassantaana
Edition:
october 2024
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