The SHARE Foundation: Building a New El Salvador Today accompanies the Salvadoran people in their struggle for justice and human rights.

In order to accompany the Salvadoran people, SHARE works through three programs: Advocacy, Grassroots, and Local Development. Each program seeks to strengthen leaders, empower women, and encourage citizen participation.

Advocacy
SHARE’s advocacy program promotes the rights of the Salvadoran rural population to shape the development paths for their country by advocating for sustainable rural development policies and programs at the national and local levels. SHARE accompanies and strengthens advocacy efforts of partners in-country, and coordinates international advocacy initiatives in support of our Salvadoran partners. The advocacy program makes a priority of addressing and offering alternatives to economic policies that deepen poverty and eliminate vital safety nets for the poor.

Grassroots
The SHARE Foundation’s Grassroots Program is an exciting initiative driven by international, cross-cultural cooperation. The program consists mainly of strong relationships between local development organizations and the communities they serve in El Salvador and US faith communities, churches, and schools via our youth partnership program. We also work closely with the Salvadoran American community, particularly on advocacy related initiatives to promote solidarity with the people of El Salvador and to commemorate El Salvador ’s martyrs, such as Archbishop Oscar Romero and the Four US Churchwomen.

Local Development
SHARE accompanies the most marginalized and vulnerable of El Salvador by supporting community development projects in collaboration with partner organizations in El Salvador. These initiatives include economic management, technical assistance and strategic organization. SHARE’s unique role is to work within a geographical “target area” in a holistic and coordinated way, strengthening and supporting a variety of community and civil organizations that are vehicles for greater community participation.

SHARE was born in 1981 in response to a cry for solidarity that came from thousands that fled from the death squads to the refugee camps in El Salvador and Honduras, as well as from the refugees that sought sanctuary here in the U.S.

Three Pillars of Accompaniment:

From our inception SHARE has literally walked with the people of El Salvador in three important ways. We call them the Three Pillars of Accompaniment: physical, spiritual and moral support, advocacy support, and finally financial support through projects. 

During the war, SHARE literally walked with our Salvadoran partners. U.S. citizens traveled to El Salvador to serve as human shields both in the refugee camps and as organized communities left the camps and walked home and began to rebuild in a war zone.

Our advocacy support came in many forms including educating and advocating our communities back home in order to bring an end to the U.S. military support in El Salvadoran and to end the war.  Projects at that time often meant the financing of efforts to rebuild communities – homes, wells, micro-businesses. 

Over the years, SHARE’s work has changed as the challenges facing the communities we accompany has changed. From the refugee camps, to the return home, the rebuilding, the Peace Accords, the struggle for the implementation of key pieces of those accords, the work to reactivate sustainable local economies in the post-war period, the efforts to create viable rural policies that will allow subsistence farmers and their families to lead dignified lives . . . SHARE has been there with physical, moral, spiritual, advocacy and financial support.

The following values inform and direct projects and actions in all program areas of SHARE:

Women’s empowerment- makes accessible education and opportunity to women and girls to improve their economic, social, and political status and abilities within communities and organizations.
Citizen participation -promote broad-based and democratic assessment and decision-making in community development and advocacy.
Leadership development- support communities and organizations in building a broader and more skilled base of people, including women, to lead for the years to come.