Octavio Polio Builds COFOA’s Relationships and Expands Their Ministry in San Luis Talpa

Octavio Polio has served as a parishioner and leader in the San Luis Rey de Fracia parish social ministry, San Luis Talpa, for years. Now he is working with COFOA, and he played a key role at their candidate’s forum by asking San Luis Talpa’s mayor to commit to meeting with COFOA’s leadership team 90 days after the election.

San Luis Talpa, home to about 10,000 people and located in the lowlands, is primarily agricultural, with sugar cane the main crop although people also grow corn and beans. Some families work in nearby textile factories that flooded in after CAFTA. The conditions in many of these factories are dismal and people work 48 hours a week for around $35/weekly.

Octavio, though, has built his own small business by driving a passenger van and catering to tourists. Octavio says that his participation in COFOA has helped him work for those in need in a new way. As he holds one-to-one conversations, he is meeting and relating to people in his own parish in a whole new way  – and he is amazed what he didn’t know before about his community. He is proud of his church for working for the common good of all.

In San Luis Talpa’s candidate’s forum, like mayors everywhere, the mayor wasn’t used to being put on the spot, and he didn’t respond to Octavio’s request to meet with COFOA after the election. Octavio had to pin him down to a yes, which finally the mayor offered.