specifically intended to generate employment and provide
alternatives to unauthorized migration.
The idea for the project came from Salvadorans living in
the diaspora in Los Angeles. Their organization, the Emergency Committee for Aid to El Salvador, was originally
focused on disaster relief. Later, its members became interested in supporting efforts to create jobs and livelihoods in
their home communities in El Salvador’s rural areas.
The Verapaz project began in 2010 with the participation of the local government and the Ministry of Agriculture. The project is managed by 15 local women who maintain the chicken coop; gather, clean, and package the eggs;
and sell them at a local market. Participants said the eggs
generate about $1,300 a month. They earned a small profit
in 2011 but seek to expand so that the operation provides a
viable job for all 15 participants. To serve as a realistic alternative to immigration, the poultry program needs to enable
each woman to earn at least $300 a month.
This project is a small work in progress. But its partnerships and innovative channeling of contributions from immigrants in the United States make it a potential model for
job creation.
Campesino (FDC or Farmers’ Democratic Front), an organization that represents 5,000 small and medium-sized farmers
in the state, and the Vista Hermosa Foundation—the charitable arm of a sizeable orchard in Washington state, most of
whose workers come from Mexico.
“It was such a natural fit for us as apple farmers to be
working with these farmers in Mexico who were living
well below the poverty line,” said Suzanne Broetje, Vista
Hermosa’s executive director and a Bread board member.
“[They were] caught up in losing their land and migrating
north in search of work.”
CRS and Vista Hermosa support technical assistance for
the apple farmers, some of it provided by people from the
area who have years of experience in U.S. orchards. Mexican
apple growers are learning strategies proven to improve apple
quality. With improved produce and better knowledge of the
market, farmers can increase the income generated by their
orchards—giving them a potential alternative to migration.
The international funding provided by CRS and Vista
Hermosa helped the FDC secure matching funds from the
Mexican Ministry of Agriculture for a cold storage facility, so that apple farmers don’t have to pay others to store
their crops. “We now have the ‘hook’ to get the resources
we need,” said FDC advisor Jesus Emiliano. “Now that we
have some money for the project, we ask [the government],
‘How much are you going to put in?’”
Another potential example of how to develop alternatives to migration is found in a chicken coop in the village
of Verapaz, about 30 miles east of El Salvador’s capital, San
Salvador. This project brings together the government of El
Salvador, the Ford Foundation, the Salvadoran immigrant
community (or diaspora) in Los Angeles, and a Salvadoran
nongovernmental organization. The poultry program is
The projects in Avila Camacho and Verapaz are not the
only projects seeking to produce jobs and reduce poverty
in the migrant-sending communities of Mexico, El Salvador, and their neighbors. Projects may be supported by
local people themselves through groups like the FDC, by
U.S. nonprofit groups such as Vista Hermosa, and/or by
diaspora groups such as the Salvadoran community in Los
Angeles. But there could be many more – and U.S. development assistance could help design and support them.
One way for U.S. development agencies to help is by
providing ingredients that evaluations of some of these jobcreation efforts have identified as most needed—particularly technical assistance. Potentially, financial resources could
be targeted to expand successful programs. Just one possibility is thinking more broadly about the use of the U.S. assistance that goes to Latin American immigrant-“sending”
countries.
In 2009, for example, 96 percent of U.S. assistance to
Mexico was spent on military and drug enforcement assistance. Assistance that could be directed toward job-creation projects totaled $11.2 million, or .01 percent of total
U.S. assistance. Yet because the cause of most unauthorized
migration is poverty and lack of jobs in Mexico’s rural areas,
projects that create more opportunities in poor communities can help ease the pressures to migrate.
A woman feeds chickens as
part of a diaspora investment
project in Verapaz, El
Salvador. November 2011.
4
World Bank/Arne Hoel
A Role for U.S. Development
Assistance