Sustaining a better life

Erasmo Valiente works as a technical team coordinator for the Jesuit Development Service (JDS), one of our partner organisations in El Salvador

Erasmo works in the municipality of Guaymango, a very poor area of the country where people struggle to grow enough food for their needs. Here, a quarter of children under five suffer from malnutrition.

Good annual harvests are vital to prevent malnutrition. So Erasmo and his team work alongside local people to help them increase their crop production and income.

“We have worked here for about eight years,” Erasmo explains. “When we started, we were working in just four communities. The organisation wasn’t well-known and there was a certain lack of confidence.”

“Little by little we have started gaining people’s trust and now we are supporting 26 communities.”

Organic farming

JDS encourages the communities to farm organically and care for the environment as a long term investment. This means planting grasses as barriers to soil erosion, making organic compost out of waste vegetation and animal dung and using plants like chilli, onion and garlic as natural insecticides.

We have worked here for eight years. Little by little we have started gaining people's trust and now we are supporting 26 communities.

JDS also encourages people to grow a greater variety of crops and have livestock, rather than rely on the traditional diet of corn and beans.

Over the eight years he’s been working here, Erasmo has seen things change for the better.

“They are now growing more than just one or two crops,” he says. “People are improving their standard of living.”

Communities in the driving seat

For Erasmo, it is the community that should be the driver of lasting change.

That’s why JDS believes it’s so important to train local volunteers to work as agricultural advisors, working alongside other farmers within the community.

Women and young people are particularly encouraged to participate.

“What is most important is that the communities share their knowledge with others. Our dream is that the local farmers should lead the work fully and we become invisible.”

Reducing risk

What is most important is that the communities share their knowledge with others. Our dream is that the local farmers lead the work.

In a region vulnerable to hurricanes and earthquakes, JDS also works to protect lives and minimise the damage to homes and land when disaster strikes.

It does this by helping communities strengthen their early warning and evacuation procedures, and building infrastructure such as bridges and retention walls in areas that are vulnerable to flooding and landslides.

The training paid off in November 2009 when Hurricane Ida caused flooding and landslides. When communities saw the weather worsen, they evacuated families living in vulnerable locations and later rescued people buried in mudslides.