By Joyce Westlake

January 10, 2020

On-time direct flight from Toronto to San Salvador via Avianca was a pleasant experience for the 10 Sweat Equity team members travelling as a group to join our advance team of Paul and Cynthia ,who had gone ahead to scout out the project that we will be working on and Mauricio who was already in El Salvador. We were greeted on arrival by Tito, our main contact, who spearheaded the project and lined up the needy families whose lives we will be changing. Tito is the Club Projects Director for the Rotary Club of San Salvador Noroeste that our team is partnered with. We are all staying at Hotel Alicante, a great pleasant family owned hotel that is just right for our group.

January 11, 2020

We settled in nicely and the first priority was to visit the worksite to survey where we will be working and to meet some of the families that we will be working with in constructing their homes. If we had any doubts about the benefit of what we are doing for the people of El Salvador, they were dispelled on meeting these warm people in their home setting. Corrugated tin shacks will be replaced for seven families by solid concrete homes. Lots of photos to come for this blog to show this unique and effective form of construction that permits a solid home to be built for a family of four or more for $5,000 Canadian.

Thanks to our donors and team members we will be able to provide seven homes on locally donated land in Talnique, a remote small town in an unbelievably beautiful mountainous setting about 45 minutes from the capital City, San Salvador.

We had the afternoon to see some of the gorgeous countryside that characterizes this small country of about six million people, and to learn something of its history and present- day life. It is a county that is on the upswing with a new young President who has things heading in the right direction from the comments we have received so far.

January 12, 2020

As part of our orientation we visited a very interesting and well presented archaeological site in a National Park near San Salvador. The Mayan culture was well developed in this region and surrounding countries from Mexico through Central America. The site we visited is just one of many in the region with unlimited opportunities for further exploration as money and skilled researchers come available.

Our final preview before getting down to our construction project was a visit to a coffee production facility. El Salvador produces high quality coffee that is sought after by connoisseurs. We will never look at a cup of coffee through the same eyes, now that we have seen what goes on in its production.

All ready to get down to work and meet some new friends in Talnique.

By Cynthia Cusimano

The volunteers have survived their first day of work at the construction site in Talnique, El Salvador. After a lovely orientation to the country over the weekend, they were ready to get to work. The site supervisor as well as the Mayor were there to greet us and the work crews were given their assignments. One crew was pointing the cement bricks which essentially meant that they mixed the cement by hand, took a makeshift trowel from a scrounged piece of flat wood and sealed the cracks between the cement blocks that made up the walls of a house. Thank goodness we all had work gloves.

The second crew were raising cement blocks using team work as they weigh about 15 kilos each. These blocks settled into place to form the walls of another house under constriction.

The volunteers were helped along by the families who are benefitting from the work being done. The women and men from the town have done a tremendous amount of work towards this project.

On our bus trip back down the mountain a unanimous decision was made to stop at a hardware store to upgrade our trowels and pick up a few tools much needed to help the process along.

Everyone is excited to return tomorrow and continue with this project.