“The San Jacinto Hill serves as the lungs of San Salvador”, says Hector Mauricio Flores, and his colleagues nod their heads in agreement.
It’s a rainy Saturday afternoon, and we are gathered in a small circle in a side room of the Community Meeting House of Santa Marta, one of the various communities that form part of the San Jacinto neighbourhood of San Salvador.
It’s fashionable to talk about climate change these days, and super fashionable to talk about ‘recuperating ecosystems’ in order to adapt to climate change. Well, who better to talk about all this than a group of people who 1) you don’t have to convince about the value of protecting the ecosystems, 2) are fun to be around, and 3) are the future generations?
Who better, in fact, than the girls and boys of El Tamarindo, a coastal community in El Salvador? Watch their video below!
We were very saddened to hear of the recent loss of two former Progressio development workers, Paulina Aguilera (pictured above) and José Luis Gavira. Our heartfelt condolences go out to their family and friends from all of us at Progressio.
Jim Matarazzo reflects on what he learned from meeting the people whose stories are featured in Prayer alone is not enough (1.86MB PDF)
A new report by Progressio urges religious leaders around the world to reflect on how faith communities can help or hinder support for people living with HIV.
The report, entitled ′Prayer alone is not enough′, is released today (World Health Day Thurs 7 April) and offers first-hand accounts from people living with HIV and those working to support them in poor and marginalised communities in Yemen, Zimbabwe and El Salvador.
John Bayron is a development worker from Colombia who currently works as a development worker on Gender Strategies for the Prevention of HIV, with the organization CONTRASIDA in El Salvador.
Having returned and digested the climate change negotiations (COP16) held in December in Cancún, Mexico, Maggie Von Vogt is back at UNES (Unidad Ecológica Salvadoreña), and immersed in vision, strategy, media messaging, and planning activities for 2011 and beyond...
What next?
People from the communities and organizations that are part of the Climate Justice Campaign have been asking me about the COP. They are asking: "What happened? How did it go? How's it looking for us? What do we need to work on? What’s next?"
"The water came up to here," he points to the middle of his chest, nodding emphatically. "Two walls fell and the house filled up and fell down. The water took all the firewood and the clothes. It was scary, we had to go stay in the school up there," he tells us with eyes wide, pointing in the direction away from the coast.
Maggie Von Vogt meets small-scale farmers living with drought and demanding action on climate change.
I spent a lot of my recent visit to the United States thinking about what kinds of changes are going to have to take place to face and adapt to climate change.
The Climate Justice Now! campaign in El Salvador was fresh in my mind as I descended in a plane, watching large expanses of territory saturated with electricity, cars everywhere, and stretches of pavement, highways, parking, and shopping malls. I asked myself, "Are people really going to be willing to change?"
