Our primary partner is the Mangrove Association, a non-governmental organization that was created to support a grassroots social movement in rural El Salvador called La Coordinadora del Bajo Lempa y Bahia de Jiquilisco (La Coordinadora for short). We have supported La Coordinadora and the Mangrove Association since their inception in the mid-1990s, helping these efforts grow to reach over 100 communities. Its members are primarily subsistence farmers and fisherfolk whose livelihoods depend on the viability of local ecosystems.

Today, the Mangrove Association supports three interconnected grassroots social movements in the Lempa River and Bay of Jiquilisco area:

La Coordinadora del Bajo Lempa — with 76 member communities

La Coordinadora de Puerto Parada — with 12 member communities, and

ASUSCUBAJI (Association for the Sustainable Use of the Watershed of the Bay of Jiquilisco), a coalition of 30 local organizations working together on disaster prevention and watershed protection.

Altogether, the work of the Mangrove Association reaches into 8 municipalities of southeastern El Salvador with a population of approximately 35,000 people.

Over time, our work with the Mangrove Association has evolved to support a region-wide movement to conserve El Salvador’s largest protected area and UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, the Bay of Jiquilisco. Working especially with fishermen, small farmers, women and youth, we support development that works with nature instead of against it.

Institutional Partners in the United States

EcoViva collaborates with a number of US-based academic institutions and nonprofit organizations that provide voluntary labor and technical expertise to our partners in El Salvador, including:

Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America
Engineers Without Borders, Iowa City
Izote

Former collaborators include:
CSU Monterey Bay
University of Kansas
Mangrove Action Project
Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey
School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
SEETurtles
Sooners Without Borders, University of Oklahoma

Please contact us if your university, school, congregation, professional association or community group would like to participate in our work in El Salvador.