Teosinte

Dear Friends:

We are writing to ask your support for our work in Teosinte, El Salvador. Teosinte is the remote community of 250 refugees with whom Alice and I worked and lived during the war in El Salvador. We are greatly appreciative of your very generous contributions to our organization in 2002 as wedding gifts to Alice and Eric. If we weren't in such dire financial straits, I would not have the audacity to write and ask your continued support for our work. I did ask Alice and Eric if it was okay with them for us to send you this letter, and they said yes! So here it is!

I lived and worked as health care provider with the people of Teosinte during their first year of reconstruction of the bombed out village. Upon returning to the United States in late 1989, I wanted to continue to work with the people, to try to give back all that they gave to me in education and a deeply rewarding, life-changing experience. I was joined in the work by my long-time friend, JoAnne LaFleur also of the Eugene, Oregon area, and we have been doing the work with the community for the last 15 years. In 1996, we founded Women's Empowerment Partnership, a nonprofit organization, to more formally organize the work.

Women's Empowerment Partnership's mission is to form respectful partnerships with poor communities to develop and empower the people to rise out of the grinding poverty that has always conditioned their lives. We work with one community at a time until that community is able to create a durable diverse, sustainable economic base and infrastructure under itself and is able to provide for itself the basic services of adequate housing, potable water, sanitation, education through university, health care, etc. Teosinte is our current partner community.

We are a five-member, all volunteer board with no paid staff, and our board pays all administrative costs of the organization, so that all donations go to the work with the people of Teosinte.

We are delighted to report to you that our work has made a huge difference in Teosinte. Perhaps the best way to evaluate our work is to look at Teosinte in light of its progress on the indices of poverty: a) birth rate: Teosinte's birth rate has dropped from 2% per year in 1988 to 0.61% per year currently; b) emigration to the U.S. and other countries: while other communities of its size see 20 youth leave per year for the U.S., Teosinte has seen only four youth leave in 15 years; c) gang and other violence: Teosinte is one of only a handful of communities without gang activity and other violence; and d) infant mortality: Teosinte and the area around it have the lowest infant mortality rate in the nation.

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	History of WEPI Historia de WEPI		Letter from Sylvia
	The Scholarship Program La Programa de Becas		Elderly Assistance
	The Stove Project La Programa de Estufas		Health Support Team