Development Works Number 3, July 2012 | Page 4

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