On Monday, Jesus Martinez, executive director of the Red de Sobrevivientes, and nine other local organizations working for disability rights in El Salvador, met with San Salvador’s newly elected Mayor, Dr. Norman Quijano. The objective of the meeting was to discuss an all-inclusive disability rights platform to be integrated into the Mayor’s new policies, especially in regards to the newly proposed and highly contested Metrobus project.

Mayor of San Salvador, Dr. Norman Quijano speaks with Jesus Martinez, director of Red de Sobrevivientes, about accessibility issues with the newly proposed Metrobus project

Mayor of San Salvador, Dr. Norman Quijano speaks with Jesus Martinez, director of Red de Sobrevivientes, about accessibility issues with the newly proposed Metrobus project

El Diario de Hoy published an article with quite a bit of spin yesterday. The Commission of Organizations of Persons with Disabilities have not committed to support the Metrobus project unless the Mayor agrees to make the new system accessible (by including lifts and ramps, making adjustments of local bus stops and curbs, and include modifications for people with visual impairments).

“Transportation is one of the biggest obstacles for people with disabilities in El Salvador,” Martinez said.

The current system is a socially constructed form of discrimination. For example a person who uses a wheelchair, who cannot afford their own vehicle or who does not have someone who can assist them to get on and off the bus, faces obstacles that sometimes leave them confined to their home or neighborhood. In a city without ramps or enforced regulations to keep sidewalks clear from obstructions (such as parked cars) travel becomes an obstacle course. Without being able to travel freely in the city, persons with disabilities are then forced to face another level of instututional barriers.

If transportation is nearly impossible, think about how difficult it would be to find a job, go to a doctor’s appointment, or even complete daily tasks such as grocery shopping or taking your children to school.

This was only the Commission’s first meeting with the Mayor’s office. Martinez and his associates are hopeful that in the coming weeks there will be a commitment from Quijano to make the new transportation system completely accessible for persons with disabilities. Alberto Monterrosa, assistant manager of Municipal Public Participation office, and David Reyes, a member of the Legislative Assembly who himself uses a wheelchair, have committed to help push the accessibility policy through.

When you first meet Selena you notice the sparkle in her eyes, if you look a little closer you can see a girl wiser and more mature than most her age. In many ways Selena Romero is like any other 13 year old girl I’ve met. She likes to hang out with her friends, play basketball, listen to music and loves fashion. She always makes sure her earrings match her shirt and spends more than enough time fixing her long dark hair before school. What you don’t notice right away when you first meet Selena, is that she uses a prosthetic leg.

Last year after complications from thrombosis (a severe blood clot), Selena lost her left leg. Doctors were forced to amputate above the knee after severe damage due to oxygen loss from the clot. She spent just over three months in the hospital recuperating and several months in physical therapy. After receiving continued peer support from Dimas Gonzalez, outreach worker for the Red de Sobrevivientes, she was determined to get back to life and finish the school year with her friends.

Selena received a prosthetic leg from the Red de Sobrevivientes just four months ago. They say that children learn fast, they bounce back, they’re resilient. In Selena’s case nothing could be more true. She practiced for hours every day with her new prosthetic leg until she was strutting like a model on the catwalk. She doesn’t use her crutches anymore and hasn’t sat in a wheelchair since the day she received her prosthetic leg. She started playing basketball again with her friends, and two months ago she picked up her old rusty bike and re-taught herself to ride.

“I fell a lot and scratched my arms,” she said, “but now its easy. I ride to school everyday and can still beat my little cousin in a race.”

Selena will be in seventh grade this year. She is excited about going to middle school, her favorite subject is math, and she aspires to be a medical doctor one day. A typical teenage girl with a very special personality trait. Selena is a survivor. She took the trauma from her amputation and turned it into motivation

Since I arrived in El Salvador I’ve developed a sixth sense, a wider scope of awareness if you will. I noticed this new sensory phenomenon the first day I walked to work. Walking to work can sometimes be like running an obstacle course blindfolded. That first day I got lost and spent nearly two hours searching for the small office building that’s actually located just 10 minutes away from my house. Somewhat aimlessly and sweating profusely from the humidity I walked up and down back and forth in circles around the residential neighborhood where the office is located. As I meandered around the city streets, I would stop passers-by and ask directions. Since street signs appear to be a rarity in this city, most people were unsure how to direct me to Calle Colima without some other landmark as a reference.

Determined, I continued on. I walked down the crumbling sidewalks that in places appear to have violently imploded and cracked open to expose their true state of dilapidation. At times I would be forced to cautiously jet out into the street and back, using skilled Frogger-like moves to maneuver around cars that were parked on the sidewalk, trying my hardest not to be flattened by the oncoming traffic. Other times I would turn sideways and slide, to the left, to the left, to squeeze between several cars that were crowded onto the narrow pedestrian path. I tripped at one point on a tree root that was stubbornly growing through the battered sidewalk and nearly did a face plant as I stepped off an absurdly high curb before I finally reached the office.

Sidewalk?

My new sense, or maybe it’s a newly developed skill, is more like a hyper-awareness: an awareness to all the accessibility challenges that people with disabilities have to face. On my walk to work, and everywhere that I have been since I started working with the Survivor Network, I begin to ask myself: How easily could someone in a wheelchair move around the parked cars on the sidewalk? How challenging would it be for someone with crutches to squeeze through the parked cars? How would a person with a visual impairment know when to cross the four lanes of chaotic traffic? How would my life be if I put myself in someone else’s shoes?

All these institutional and social barriers that I once overlooked in my own country seem to now be amplified in El Salvador. The crumbling sidewalks represent only a small fraction of societal challenges for persons with disabilities. The public transportation system, medical facilities, public schools, local businesses, even many government facilities are not accessible to people with disabilities.

The Survivor Network is trying to change the societal barriers in El Salvador. Through their Social Empowerment Program and the assistance of their experienced outreach workers, they are organizing associations of persons with disabilities at the municipal level and educating survivors to advocate for their rights. The Survivor Network was instrumental in the 2007 ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, but there is still the question of implementation. The next step is enforcing laws and changing policies to ensure that persons with disabilities not only have equal rights and opportunities, but equal access to the same services as people without disabilities.

What does accessibility mean for persons with disabilities in El Salvador? This is a question I will continue to ask myself, my coworkers, and their clients throughout the duration of my fellowship.

It’s hard for me to believe that it’s been two weeks since my flight touched down at Comalapa International Airport. We landed in the darkness with the lights of San Salvador casting an obscure amber glow into the night sky. Stepping off the plane I felt both fear and anticipation well up in my stomach. I’ve been planning for the AP fellowship for the past few months, but the weeks leading up to my departure were a whirlwind: finishing my graduate coursework in Vermont, packing up my apartment, attending the AP training session in DC, vaccinations, visas, spending some time in New York with friends, generally just trying to organize my life before embarking on this new chapter.

Only now am I finally beginning to feel settled again. After my enthusiastic introduction to San Salvador and my new coworkers, I’m more excited than ever about the work I’ll be doing this summer with the Fundación Red de Sobrevivientes y Personas con Discapacidades (The Network of Landmine Survivors and Persons with Disabilities).

I hit the ground running two weeks ago and have been extremely busy since day one: attending staff meetings and strategic planning workshops, traveling to rural communities with the organization’s outreach workers to visit survivors in their homes, participating in an educational workshop with the coordinator of the health program, and spending each day with my new colleagues learning little by little what amazing work they do for people with disabilities. The unrelenting dedication, moments of camaraderie and laughter, and genuine affection of the staff has left me with an unparalleled first impression.

Before I go into the detail of my day-to-day work with the Survivor Network, I feel it’s best to begin this fledgling Blog with a little background information…

Red logo

The organization was originally established as a network partner of Survivor Corps in 2001. Even though the armed conflict officially ended in 1992 with the signing of a peace agreement, El Salvador is a country still healing and struggling with repercussions from the decade long civil war. The Survivor Network (formerly LSN-ES) was founded with the intention of assisting survivors of the armed conflict. There are more than 70,000 survivors in El Salvador who carry with them not only the psychological trauma of war, but a physical scar left behind after the violence of a battle or a landmine explosion.

Peer Support is one of the principle methodologies adapted from Survivor Corps’ path to survivorship. Through the one-on-one support, Survivor Network’s outreach workers meet with people with disabilities who may have felt discouraged or alone in their situation. This type of support enables the person not only to heal, but to become empowered through the recovery process. By sharing their experiences with an outreach worker who has also suffered through the trauma of a disability and learned to embrace life, clients begin to find an inner-strength that sparks the transformation from victim to survivor.

The Survivor Network focuses on three distinct program areas: human rights advocacy, health and recovery, and economic opportunity. In the past few years, the organization has begun to expand their services. They not only support persons with physical disabilities, such as amputations, but are now reaching out to include people with other types of physical disabilities. Today the Network reaches 11 of the 14 departments throughout the country and has assisted more than 3,500 individuals with disabilities.

2009 has already proven to be a monumental year for the Survivors Network. In January of this year they became an independent, Salvadoran nonprofit organization. The Network is still going through a transition and learning to function as an independent organization. As they move forward, they carry with them the philosophies and ongoing support of their international partner and benefactor Survivor Corps. Continuing the struggle for equal rights and opportunities for people with disabilities in El Salvador, the Survivor Network will expand and increase their support of people with disabilities throughout the country. It’s encouraging to see program participants, who were once recipients of peer support themselves, are now becoming leaders in their communities and extending the philosophy of peer support and citizen advocacy to help other people with disabilities in their area.

Although their name has changed from LSN-ES (Landmine Survivor’s Network El Salvador) to La Fundación Red de Sobrevivientes y Personas con Discapacidad, their mission and vision remain the same: to be the leading organization in the promotion of social and economic inclusion of armed conflict survivors and persons with disabilities, so that they may reach their full potential and become independent.