Building Peace Center. Fundraising letter

We invite delegations to come to El Salvador and help build the Center. Call, please.

Dear Friend,

We have a piece of land, and we are determined to build the Mesoamerica Training Center in El Salvador! For 11 years, we have been renting facilities 1) for the training of peacemakers in values and principals and in the Appreciative Inquiry Methodology that we have adopted and adapted; and 2) for training in skills that are necessary for life, such as organic farming, raising small animals, alternative medicine, and so on. We have discerned that it is time to have our facility where we can share and teach what we have learned about peace and community development for so many years.

There are wise people in Mesoamerica who have accumulated experience and are ready to transfer technical skills and knowledge to the peacemakers of our region. Last July and August, for example, we brought to El Salvador and Guatemala don Jacinto Peña, a Panamanian peasant and expert in marketing and organic farming with 38 years of experience. Jacinto taught the peasants of Las Lajas, El Salvador how to organize a cooperative and how to start a community store that will enable the flow of cash to take place within the community. In Xela, Guatemala, Jacinto taught natural medicine and organic farming. At this time, Rev. Francisco Juárez, a Nicaraguan Baptist minister and founder of the Ebenezer Center, shared the harvest of his 37 years of experience as well. Rev. Juárez teaches people how to make $5,000 a year in two acres of land raising small animals including 420 sq. meters of earthworms and organic vegetable garden. In this gathering, we also learned about natural medicine from the assistant of Fr. Fausto Milla, the Honduran founder of INHESCO. We have been working with these and other talented people training our peacemakers for the past 6 years. They are ready to continue assisting us as we deepen our impact and self-sustain our work through our own facility

You can help us to build our Training Center in Mesoamerica with your donation.

§  It takes $300 for building a square meter of the meeting center. Materials: wood and palm. Size: 100 square meters

§  It takes $7,320 to build a bedroom with six beds. Material: cement blocks at $70 for 100; $8.50 for a bag of cement; and $45 the iron. We want to build six bedrooms to lodge 36 people. Size: 18,30 square meters.

§  The cost of a bed is $150.

§  The cost of a chair is $30.

I really believe that it is in our hands to build the facility. I have the experience. When I started the Foundation for Self-Sufficiency in CA (now ECOVIVA), I proposed to build the facility of Ciudad Romero; the dollars arrived, and it was done with success. All it takes is your support. Education is the base of development and, with values and principles, of peace.

Peace and justice,

José “Chencho” Alas

1501 Lisa Rae Dr.

Round Rock, TX 78665

Tel. 512-922-5931

Email: chencho.alas@sbcglobal.net; Blog: Mesoamerica Peace Movement; Web page: discover-peace.org