Habitat El Salvador holds Affiliate Summit 2023

June 2023. Habitat El Salvador celebrated the Affiliate Summit 2023: Better Together, in which we had the participation of 22 international partners from 9 affiliates from the United States and Habitat International. For three days we met to see first-hand the impact that together we are building in El Salvador, as well as to design new ideas for the future.

The summit addressed the impact of collaborative work in 3 aspects.

Building impact in the community

We visit the communities of the project «Construyendo Esperanza en Ahuachapán». We learned about the results of our Early Education Center and Community Clinic, while we listened to the testimonies of homeowners. We are currently designing the second phase of this project, with the valuable support of our partners Habitat of th Charlotte Region and Myers Park Presbiterian Church.

During that same day, we had a construction time, in which the participants had the opportunity to put on their gloves to dig foundations, make some chispa, putting blocks and paint walls. After three years without visiting the country and participating as Global Village volunteers, the hours at the construction site fell short.

Building impact in the sector

We visited our green house in La Palma, Chalatenango, which was designed in collaboration with the University of Seville (Spain) and has financial support from the Andalusian Agency for International Development Cooperation and Habitat Milwaukee. During our visit, we learned more about the approach that Habitat El Salvador has towards sustainable construction. We also talked about the global campaign Home Equals… («Hogar es», en español) con las intervenciones que llevaremos a cabo en el país.

Building impact in the society

We received a series of conferences to understand in a better way the housing situation in El Salvador and the work we are doing here. Eduardo Rodríguez, former representative of UN Habitat for El Salvador, shared a profile of the housing sector in El Salvador; Diana Guerra, Coordinator of International Cooperation Projects at Habitat El Salvador, spoke about sustainable construction in El Salvador; and Ernesto Tobar, Executive Director of Habitat El Salvador, shared about our vision for the future of the country and our organization.

We concluded the day with a workshop in which our affiliated partners shared good practices from their organizations, in order to share experiences and knowledge. We had the opportunity to design together relevant ideas for the future of our work in El Salvador and the call was made to commit ourselves in specific areas to strengthen our relationships in the coming years.

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We are better together. At Habitat El Salvador we are convinced that by building together, homeowners, volunteers and partners, national and international, we will reach the day in which each family has a decent place to live.

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For more information, photos and resources from the Affiliate Summit 2023::