El Salvador

Lack of opportunities, gang violence and high levels of extortion put young people in El Salvador at risk but providing meaningful employment can help them escape the cycle of violence.
 
HALO is piloting a project that combines vital restoration of El Salvador's mangrove forests with creating opportunities for at-risk youth. A century ago, El Salvador had 100,000 hectares of saltwater forest but today only 40 per cent of this remains. Mangrove forests are one of the most productive and critical ecosystems on the planet contributing to water purification and storage, fisheries, timber production, aquifer recharge, carbon fixation and climate regulation. Crucially in a part of the world subject to extreme weather events, the mangroves also protect and stabilise the coastline.
 
In partnership with Asociación Mangle—a community-led organisation focused on improving living conditions via the construction of a system with economic, social, and environmental justice and equity of gender—HALO will build a community-led intervention plan to restore the mangroves. Working alongside Asociación Generaciones de Paz—an organisation focusing on the environmental and ecological rights of marginalised and vulnerable young people—the project will employ 25 at-risk young people; training them as re-foresters to set up mangrove nurseries and grow 10,000 seedlings to be replanted.

Our work in El Salvador is funded by:

The Government of the United States