Walking With El Salvador

During the third week of January, students began the 2025 academic year. After the kids were settled in school, the Los Héroes Women's Project got things organized and started producing this year's batch of   Days for Girls kits.    It didn't take long for school directors and community leaders to start sending invitations to Pastor Sonia, the Los Héroes Women's Project coordinator, to come and lead education sessions and distribute the menstruation kits to girls who need them. If girls don't have access to hygiene products, they cannot attend classes. Teachers and directors recognize this need. School staff are interested in learning about the kits themselves so they can promote their use. Over the past 9 years, it has been most common for teachers and community leaders to gather groups of women and girls, not men and boys, to participate in the menstruation education classes. Guys were never specifically excluded, but they were not typically included in the target...

Twenty-five years ago, our nurse practitioner did pelvic exams and pap smears for women in our Salvadoran sister community. She brought glass slides, used hairspray as fixative and somehow got those test results back to the women. She diagnosed many infections. We brought medications for that. It was a bold move for one of our first activities as sister churches together.  Girls in a remote community learning about their bodies, 2024 Helping women and girls to learn about their bodies, to listen to their bodies, to have agency over their bodies, and to have access to what they need to care for their bodies: this has been a  twenty-five year ministry of our churches working together. Twenty-five years of making  steady steps and bold moves  together. In many families, frank talks about sex, reproductive health and menstruation are open and honest. In other families, these conversations include misinformation or don't happen at all. Through the years of doing Missions ...

"No one has been to the small cantones.  The girls out there have never received any kind of sex education. The Unidad de Salud is hearing about girls who are falling into pregnancy ... you know ... because of what we are going through ... this pandemic."                    Sonia Acknowledging the possible and probable increase in the number of sexual assaults and sexual abuse of young girls due to the pandemic is something done in safe spaces.  The Women's Project in the Los Héroes church provides such a safe space, and when Sonia talks about the team's work and the positive impact it has on girls' lives, she is on fire.   Statistics for 2020 have been compiled by the Salvadoran government's Ministry of Health and are being studied by women's rights groups.  It's hard to tell what the actual numbers of child and teen pregnancies are for 2020, but initial numbers are included in the graphic below.  12,781 re...

My husband, who closely follows and blogs about news in El Salvador, posted a story today about the lack of holistic sex education in El Salvador.   Readers of this blog know that reproductive education, precocious pregnancy and sexual abuse of girls and teens are persistent areas of focus in our work with the church and particularly during the Missions of Healing Education fairs which we conduct each year.  For a bit of background on these topics, readers may wish to refer to  Girls and Sex Education  as well as  How can this Be? A couple of months ago, I started working with a pastor who has a congregation in a small town and a mission congregation in a remote mountainous zone, a 2-hour walk outside of town.  Over the past 2 years, the pastor had done some teaching about menstruation during the Missions of Healing in conjunction with the distribution of Days for Girls kits (washable menstruation kits).  With her confidence and experience, the pasto...

As part of our annual Mission of Healing Family Wellness Fairs next week, we will be distributing Days for Girls washable feminine hygiene kits.  The kits will be given to girls ages 9 to 18 as part of a teaching charla  (educational conversation) about menstruation. Earlier this month, as pastors and leaders gathered to plan for this year's fairs, we shared an animated and difficult conversation about sex education and the realities of life for many girls in El Salvador.  One pastor had experienced some negative aftermath following a Mission of Healing Family Wellness Fair in her community two years ago.  A nearby school had sent groups of students in 7th through 9th grade to the fair with their teachers.  The students participated in the sex education charla, and as part of the charla observed the proper technique for placing a condom over a rather large wooden penis.  (This is an education charla which is done by health promoters from the church, and h...

A small group of women gather in pretty purple house.  For a while it is quiet, except for the whirrr of a few sewing machines.  Then someone makes a joke and the room erupts in laughter.  Outside the house, thunder rolls and big raindrops begin to fall with loud plops onto the leaves of banana, mango, lime, and cashew trees.  Soon the laughter and the sewing machines are equally drowned out by the loud roar of a heavy downpour on the metal roof.  Everyone goes back to work. Women sewing Days for Girls kits  This is a story of determination.  This is a story of community.  This is a story of creativity.  This is a story of women working together in support of one another across boundaries, across cultures and across languages.  This is a story which began with a need for girls and women to have good information about their bodies, which led to a connection with Days for Girls International , which led to giving away more than ...