The Beginning of the Craziness that was 2020

Wow. What a crazy year it has been. Like the rest of the world, the community of Los Tehuistes in La Paz, El Salvador was not immune to the global pandemic. But due to their rural location and high levels of poverty, Los Tehuistes faces unique challenges in addition to the devastating pandemic.

Like the United States and the rest of the world, El Salvador transitioned their school into an online format to increase social distancing and reduce the spread of the virus. Nevertheless, rural areas throughout El Salvador have little to no internet access which means that our scholarship students had no way to complete their schoolwork. But what does school matter when there is no food? How can school possibly be a priority when you and your family are perpetually hungry?

As bad as things were, and are throughout the world, there are two silver linings that we, Caminos de Accion, were able to provide to those in the community of Los Tehuistes.

 The two most pressing problems facing the community were 1) food scarcity and 2) lack of internet access for students. We are extremely thankful to Molly Hampton and the PRBB Foundation awarding us a grant since 2014 for emergency funds of $5,000. We utilized that money to buy four computers for the community (yes, four!), to provide families with emergency cash and food, and to bring more families into our sustainable agriculture program. We will be using these next few weeks to give everyone updates on our work over the past year with how we helped to bring internet to our scholarship students, and how our sustainable agriculture program has grown throughout this past year.