CONSCIENCIA (critical awareness)
is the realization that the social world is not fixed, but changeable.
CREATIVIDAD (creativity)
is the ability to help create a new world with one’s ideas.

What do we do?

What we advocate

A country like El Salvador which suffers from serious social problems – one of the highest homicide rates in the world, to name but one – is in urgent need of well-trained young people who can bring about social change.

This is why Consciente is committed to a creative and critical education for all. In our eyes, this is the key to a sustainable bottom-up development process.

Our projects

Access to education for all, irrespective of socio-economic background
Scholarship Program
Improving the quality of education in local schools
Educational Innovation Program
Promoting the discussion of important social and environmental issues
Sustainability Education Program

Responsible project work at all levels

Read our Code of Ethics and Conduct (in German)

Background

Quality of education

If one had to make a brief description of the educational system in El Salvador, it could be done using the following three expressions: copy, learn by heart, reproduce. Education in El Salvador usually has little to do with understanding, discovering, discussing, forming an opinion or developing one’s own ideas. At school, children rather learn to accept that they do not understand what it is all about. Consequently, little is remembered. After nine years of primary education, many youth neither have solid skills in writing and arithmetic, nor have they learned to think for themselves or to act creatively.

Access to education

Besides the low quality of education, its bad accessibility is another major problem. For young people from poor backgrounds, their educational career is usually over after primary school or high school. Academic and technical training is reserved for those whose families can afford it.

Where are we?

El Salvador

El Salvador is a small country in Central America. Together with neighboring Honduras and Guatemala, it forms the “Triangulo del Norte” (Northern Triangle), the region with the highest murder rate in the world. In El Salvador alone, gang crime claimed more than 20 lives a day in 2015 (out of a population of around 6.5 million). In addition to violence, the country has to deal with many other problems. Almost 50% of the population lives below the poverty line, and just as many are unemployed or underemployed. Because of the difficult social situation, many people leave the country, most of them trying to enter the U.S. illegally at the risk of their lives.

Department of Morazán

The department of Morazán has about 200,000 inhabitants and is considered the poorest in the country. The vast majority of the population lives below the poverty line, with as many as 17.5% of the population living in extreme poverty. The region was hit very hard by the civil war in the 1980s. Many of the older inhabitants were directly involved in the war on the side of the guerrillas or on that of the military dictatorship, lost friends or relatives or had to flee from the contested mountain regions to the lowlands or temporarily to Honduras. Direct and indirect consequences of the war are still strongly felt in the region today.

43%

of Salvadorians want to leave the country, according to a survey

20 People

a day become victims of a homicide

65%

of the youth in Morazán live in poverty or extreme poverty

of young people in Morazán complete a tertiary degree

2.2 million

Salvadorians live in the USA

Through our work we make a small contribution towards ensuring that El Salvador does not remain a country from which everyone wants to emigrate.

How do we work?

Fundación Consciente in El Salvador

The team in El Salvador consists of committed and talented people who are employed by our local partner organisation “Fundación Consciente El Salvador”.

The Salvadorian coordination team is actively supported by volunteers as well as by our scholarship holders who do community service in various projects.

About the team

Support association in Switzerland

The support association in Switzerland is responsible for financing and accompanying the projects. The association is managed by a board of directors, which works exclusively on a voluntary basis and pays for flights and personal project support costs itself.

About the team

Read our Code of Ethics and Conduct (in German)