About Us
Empowered Women, Thriving Communities
Women’s Empowerment Partnership is a small nonprofit organization based in Eugene, Oregon, whose mission is to assist women and families to rise out of poverty permanently and become self-sustaining. We work in two communities currently:
Local, Eugene/Springfield unhoused and/or impoverished women and families. Locally, we work with clients to stabilize them in housing and livable-wage work and provide emergency food aid, health and dental care, minor legal expenses, clothing, shoes and accessories for work, training and education, maintenance of phone and internet service, and transportation. Once accepted into our program, clients who are working hard to become self-sustaining will be assisted in the future if they become financially unstable again.
The Community of Teosinte, El Salvador. We are assisting community members with health needs–medications, specialist care, and laboratory tests–which are not available through the public health system there. We are also raising funds to send youth and heads of household to trade school which would double their earning potential and lift whole families out of poverty.
. History of Women’s Empowerment Partnership
WEP is a 501.c.3 nonprofit organization, formally founded in 1997, to facilitate the work Sylvia Gregory and JoAnne LaFleur were doing with the community of Teosinte, El Salvador.
Background Information:
The civil war in El Salvador began in the mid-1970s but was formally declared in 1981, and ended in 1992 when the United Nations brokered Peace Accords between the government of El Salvador and the guerrilla Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). The remote village of Teosinte, in the northern mountains of El Salvador, was bombed to oblivion in 1981 by the Salvadoran Air Force, leaving four survivors who fled and never returned.
The village lay in ruins until August 17, 1988, when 350 people came back from Mesa Grande Refugee Camp in Honduras, to reconstruct it. The people returned to a village in ruins, with only pieces of walls still standing. They
organized into teams to begin the immense task of reconstruction: the agriculture team, road repair team, potable water, house reconstruction, clinic, education, and pastoral teams. WEP cofounder, Sylvia Gregory, lived and worked with the community from 1988-89, during their first year of reconstruction. She was so astounded and impressed by the accomplishments of the people, against the odds of war, poverty, and a village in ruins, that she continued to work with them after she returned to the U.S. in December 1989.
While the community of Teosinte organized the projects they needed for their rise out of poverty, they also had support from the Salvadoran movement for justice. The role of our organization was to provide funds where needed.
Miracles of Teosinte And The Salvadoran Popular Movement For Justice
While the community of Teosinte organized the projects they needed for their rise out of poverty, with the full support of the Salvadoran movement for justice, the role of our organization was to provide funds where needed.
Teosinte’s First Clinic: When I arrived in Teosinte in October 1988, just two months after the people had returned from Honduran refugee camps, the health team, made up of two men from the community–Rafael and Benjamin–had already started Teosinte’s Clinic. Note that they both were barely literate and worked as volunteers in the Clinic, which was in addition to work in the other reconstruction teams they were part of. At that time, Rafael was 20 years old and Benjamin was about 35. The first Clinic was meager–plastic and corrugated-metal walls, “an exam table” consisting of a 3-legged cot, mud floor, and no electricity or running water. Instruments were sterilized over an open fire. In a photo below, you see Rafael in 1988, examining a stool sample for parasites, using a high school microscope. Then, you see Rafael at age 55 in 2023 in his Ministry of Health uniform. From volunteer health promoter in 1988, he segued to becoming a health promoter, paid by the Ministry of Health. He now provides public health services–vaccine campaigns, birth control education, prenatal care, and care for chronic health conditions–to a large area of rural Chalatenango Department. Later, Elena Alas, health promoter and midwife extraordinaire took over Clinic duties. When she took the Catholic Church’s advanced health promoter class, a visiting Belgian physician was so impressed with her that he built a First-World-Standard Clinic in Teosinte, which opened its doors in 1998.
Rafael: He started out as a volunteer. Seen here at age 20 in 1988, using a high school microscope to examine a stool specimen for parasites.
Rafael: seen here in 2023, age 55, in his health promoter uniform, he is paid an adequate wage by the Ministry of Health to provide public health services to all the surrounding rural areas in the Chalatenango Department.
Elena, a widow of the war with five children to raise, became a health promoter and midwife extraordinaire in Teosinte! From 1988 to 2013, she birthed all babies in Teosinte and many of the surrounding communities without a single maternal or infant fatality!
Teosinte’s School: Another stunning achievement was Teosinte’s first school. In April of 1989, just seven months after their return to Teosinte, the people announced they were starting a school. It was astounding because all the adults in Teosinte were essentially illiterate except three men who had a 4th-grade education.
One of those men, Abel, became principal of the school and the teachers were 12-year-old young women who had had two years of primary school in the refugee camps in Honduras. So, the community got a 4’ x 8’ sheet of plywood, painted it black, bought a box of chalk, and started a school. They knew it was not a good school, but said education was the only way out of poverty. So, the 12-year-old teachers taught preschool through second grade in the morning and went to third grade themselves in the afternoon. Every weekend, the teachers and the principal studied to bring their grade levels up so they could offer more grades to Teosinte’s children.
And, all such schools in repatriated communities were supported by the popular movement for justice, so that a year or two after its beginning, there were proper desks for the students, books, paper, etc. For the teachers to be paid by the Ministry of Education (once the war was over), they would had to have their degrees in education from the University of El Salvador (UES). So, UES (being part of the movement for justice) brought university education out to these rural communities. And, by 2002, the young women who began teaching at age 12, had graduated with their degrees in education from the University of El Salvador and were then paid by the Ministry of Education to teach!!
Teosinte’s First School: A photo of Teosinte’s first school in 1989. The young women seen here were Teosinte’s 12-year-old teachers who taught preschool through second grade in the morning and went to third grade themselves in the afternoon.
This is a photo of a Teosinte School classroom, in 1991. The desks and chairs and other supplies you see here were provided by the Salvadoran Popular Movement for Justice. Since the Ministry of Education would not send teachers out to schools located in war zones, like Teosinte was, the Salvadoran Popular Movement for Justice created in these areas a parallel education system.
Teosinte’s Land Purchase: After the war was over in 1992, the 30-some owners of the land Teosinte occupied wanted their land back. In August 1993, when they were going to be evicted from their land, the people held an all-town assembly to decide what to do about the crisis. At the end of the day, they decided to buy their land, cash up front, despite not having a dime.
They then organized to accomplish the task! And, in a year and a half, they purchased 900 acres of land! The land is held communally and each family is given a lot for a house and a plot of land for farming.
Teosinte’s extraordinary accomplishments were due to five elements: impressive organization, hard work, love, faith, and hope. And, they never believed there was something they could not accomplish.