USAID San Salvador Launches Remittances for Education Program
August 24, 2004

On August 17th, Mark Silverman, Director of USAID in El Salvador, launched a mini-scholarship program which will encourage remittances sent from Salvadorans living abroad to be invested in education by providing matching grants from USAID funds.

The Minister of Education, Darlyn Meza, also participated in the event. The pilot program will provide school supplies and shoes to 2000 poor, rural schoolchildren and to 40 schools in Morazán, Chalatenango, Usulután and San Miguel.

The program is a first for El Salvador because it relies on funds from hometown associations, mostly in the U.S., and encourages business to take over funding of the program after the initial one-year investment of $463,000 by USAID.

Comunidades Unidas Salvadoreñas and Salvadoreños Asociados de Maryland are the groups that will provide initial support from the United States. Local partners are Visión Mundial, Banco Agrícola, Fundación Panamericana para el Desarrollo (FUPAD) and Fundación Empresarial para el Desarrollo Educativo (FEPADE.)

" This innovative program will help strengthen the ties between poor rural areas in El Salvador and the Salvadoran communities in the Unites States that are interested in helping poor children finish primary school," said Silverman. Amy Coughenour, Deputy Director of FUPAD added, "This initiative combines the experiences of the Salvadorans living in the United States, who have worked on community development projects, with an initiative focused on education. The lessons learned from this experience will serve as a model for how to unite many groups and work toward a joint objective."