El Salvador Trip 2014

My husband, daughter and I recently took our semi-annual trip to El Salvador. We are part of a group in Wisconsin and Illinois that sponsor kids to go to school (a whopping $160/year) and we fund-raise each year to get money to help locals in rural communities with various projects. Lately, we have been helping build homes (you’ll see them lower in the post). The community of Alegria has a cooperative that families can belong to to help each other build homes. To participate, each family has to contribute $8/month until they can save up $500. That is their part of the cost of an approx. $3000 cider-block, two room home. All the families show up to put up the home. If they are lucky, they can save more money and by some paint.

Enjoy!

These first ones are from the large capital city of San Salvador.

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These are from our meetings with kids our group sponsors in some of the rural communities. We even got traditional entertainment this year. Saw kids with cell phones this year, which I hadn’t seen before – mostly it just was adults, if they had one at all, which most didn’t and probably still don’t in the rural communities.

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These next pictures are from Alegria in the south-central mountain area where a lot of coffee is grown. It actually can get very cool in the evening in the hills of Alegria. We weren’t the only foreigners in Alegria, there were Spaniards visiting as well. It’s a tourist destination.

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These last set of pictures are from a day and a half at Cosa del Sol. Very warm and relaxing.

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