El Salvador: Organizing for Electricity in Central America

Sixty-six grassroots leaders from Communities of Faith Organizing for Action (COFOA) in Las Brisas del Paraíso, El Salvador, met with Gilberto Mejia, an engineer from the national electricity supplier, to learn how their homes could be connected to the grid. Twenty percent of rural households in El Salvador do not have their own electric lighting. COFOA leaders from ten communities in El Salvador and Honduras are organizing to bring life-changing electricity to their homes. Last year, 42 families in San Cayetano, El Salvador, celebrated the installation of electricity in their community. In many communities, the struggle for electricity and other basic services is part of the effort by families to obtain legal title to their land. When families are defrauded of land titles, their communities are left in limbo, unable to obtain public investment in development. But COFOA leaders are not waiting for their titles to make improvements to their communities. And they are keeping pressure on the Salvadoran Government to meet its obligation to invest community development funds in marginalized communities based on needs identified by residents.