Model community

Villa Centenario has already served its purpose as a model for healthy living. El Salvador’s Vice Ministry of Housing has adopted the VIVISAL concept as the basis for construction of some 50,000 new homes in rural areas, incorporating both its sanitary features and its focus on community participation in health.

As for the town’s own residents, their "transformation"—from earthquake victims to protagonists of social change—can be seen in the Osorio family. One of the first to contribute to the construction of Villa Centenario, Carlos Osorio is today a well-known and respected figure who has taken on considerable responsibility in the community. He has served as president of the city council on five occasions, he holds primary responsibility for the functioning of the community center and the central park and he supervises the bakery and the tortilla mill. He also attends courses on family and community hygiene and participates in a hydroponic orchard program sponsored by INCAP.

His wife has a paid job in the bakery and in a local women-run microenterprise, and volunteers in one of the community health brigades. Their two youngest children are once again in school.

Yet the transformation is by no means complete. "To build a successful, sustainable community, there must emerge a strong sense of belonging among the families—who didn’t know each other before—so they can identify the problems they share and come up with common solutions," says Maritza Romero, expert in health promotion in PAHO’s country office in San Salvador.

Children from Villa Centenario gather outside the adobe archway that welcomes visitors to their community. “OPS” is Spanish for PAHO.

"Villa Centenario is a successful model community in terms of environmental health, but it still faces the intractable problems of people living in extreme poverty," notes Gerardo Merino, a nutrition expert and INCAP consultant in El Salvador. "Some of the residents are apparently so undernourished, for example, that they lack the strength or motivation to participate in community activities or training."

Osorio is living proof that the lack of employment sources is perhaps the most difficult and necessary obstacle still to surmount.

"My main problem is economic, because I don’t have work," he says. "I depend on what my older children give me to support the rest of my kids. Sometimes we only have corn to eat, and often we go to bed with empty stomachs. I give thanks to God and to all those who have supported us, but I hope to find work soon because I don’t like to beg."

Jorge Jenkins Molieri is an environmental health advisor and head of the disaster program in PAHO’s country office in San Salvador.

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