By Hannah Flamm

Graciela Funes, mother of six and now raising two grandchildren, used to run the school store at the San Francisco El Dorado public primary school. The school is located two hours by bus north of San Salvador in one of El Salvador’s poorest departments, Cabañas. Spanning 700 square miles and with a population of 150,000, the department’s per capita income ($1,676) is almost half the national rural average and less than a quarter of the national urban average. Average life expectancy is 62 years in rural Cabañas, ten years less than the national average. Approximately 42% of the department’s population does not have access to potable water, while nationally only 26% lack access. The majority of the population is subsistence farmers.

Since Graciela quit the school store years ago – she says it was robbed too many times to be worth it – she has continued to sew clothes, linens, and school bags from the fabric and thread she buys in San Salvador’s sprawling, gang-controlled central market. For years, every Saturday morning, Graciela’s daughters and grandchildren would walk all the dirt paths and cobblestone streets to sell door-to-door and take orders for next week. They would also set up shop on the sidelines of the slanted, cattle pasture-turned-soccer field to sell during soccer matches.

On January 13, 2001, a 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck El Salvador. After over 2,500 aftershocks, on February 13, 2001, another 6.6 magnitude quake hit. The mud brick preschool in San Francisco El Dorado collapsed. Four years later, with support from International Partners and other Salvadoran and international development organizations, a new, cinderblock preschool was built on the only public land in Hacienda Vieja, the neighboring community that took the initiative to build the school. (Previously, the public land was a steep, triangular plot where people burned their garbage.) Between January 2001 and January 2005, forty two- to six-year-olds attended preschool on Graciela’s front porch.

Graciela’s dream for a Sewing Cooperative is not new. She says her small business, run off one, pedal-operated sewing machine and her own creativity, is helpful for her family, but does little for other women and families in the community. She wanted to teach the other women – and some men – to sew, the first step to creating a Cooperative; but they had no machines.

In January 2009, the Institute for Global Leadership sent money for Graciela to buy two sewing machines at $129 a piece. She immediately began giving classes Monday, Tuesday, and Friday afternoons at the preschool. The women rotated hour-long turns at the two new sewing machines and watched their friends and neighbors learn. They laughed at each other’s “drunken” stitching before mastering the machine’s rhythm. After a few days of practicing, the women started bringing their old t-shirts and skirts to cut up and re-sew. While the turnout and excitement were strong, the group’s numbers slowly dwindled as some people decided they could not spend so much time waiting for a machine and so little time actually at it.

In March 2009, the Cooperative sent the IGL a request for support to expand the Cooperative so that more people could be involved. With the Cooperative established as a new project under the IGL’s EMPOWER social entrepreneurship program, the Institute could respond to the request with four more sewing machines.

The women wrote:

We, as women of the community, are interested in learning to sew, since in the community we have no employment with which to obtain resources for our families. To learn this type of activity would be a way to help ourselves and make a living. We are a group of twelve women, who attend a sewing course three times a week. There are more people interested, but since we only have two machines, we cannot include more people. The majority of the women in the community are interested in the course, but we need more machines to teach them.

The objective for the sewing machines is that, once the women have learned to sew, we will be able to open the cooperative. Everyone who learns will be able to sell what they make, and the profit will be used to support the women’s families. A small portion of the money will go to the ADESCO (Association for Community Development) so that we can maintain and care for the machines.

With this project, only twelve women are benefiting now, but if we increase the number of machines, about twenty people, including men and women, will be involved. That is our idea. These people are the ones who will benefit directly, but indirectly, the whole community will benefit because there would be an employment that generates income for many families.

Many of the women also made a personal statement:

I, Francisca Rivera, am very content to be learning to sew my own things. At the same time, by learning this skill, I will be able to generate income for my family. I thank you for the support you give us.

I, Maria Elena Rivera, single mother of five children, feel very content to be learning to sew. With this skill, I will be able to help my children, since I have no other employment to be able to help my children. But I feel very happy that I am now learning. Thank you for helping us.

I, Flor de Maria Vasquez, thank you because you have seen the necessities of the community. We have benefited from the help you have offered us. It is with this help from you that we are learning to sew.

I, Lucia Sorto, am very content to be learning to sew. I am very grateful because you support us to learn this skill. If it were not for you, we would not have learned what we are now learning.

I, Dora del Carmen Torres, am very grateful for providing us the opportunity to learn to sew. I thank you for the support you offer.

My name is Dina del Carmen Moreno, and I feel very content with you because you made a reality out of our dreams. With your help, we have been able to learn to sew different styles. We have learned how to make shoulder bags, and other things. I give you thanks for all the support you have offered us. Thank you, a thousand thank you’s.

My name is Marta Claribel Echeverria. I am very content for the help that you have given us, since in our community no source of employment existed, and now I am learning already to make shoulder bags for my brothers and people of the community. And I thank you.

(Photo by Hannah Flamm:
The Cooperative’s first big job was to turn 28 IGL t-shirts (one for each year of EPIIC and then some other special events) into a giant quilt, to be displayed at some of the Institute’s 25th Anniversary celebrations next year. In four days, with several women sitting together for a few hours each day, the quilt was done. Before they cut up the shirts, they gave them one last wear.