Salomé Martínez

El Salvador

The people of El Salvador are still recovering from the 30-year civil war, in which, out of population of six million, 80,000 lost their lives and approximately one million were displaced. As a program officer at the Citizen Participation and Governance Project of the Washington-based firm Creative Associates, Salomé Martínez increases civil society’s capacity for self-advocacy. Her work is part of the organization’s larger goals of reintegrating former combatants and repairing political structures in the country. Following the damage done to El Salvador’s infrastructure by Hurricane Mitch, she contributed to civil society’s rebuilding efforts with the National Reconstruction Council, working with displaced people to build new homes and meet basic needs. At the Center for Development and Population Activities, Ms. Martínez trained young women to lead their own civic and social programs. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in political science from Central American University José Simeón Cañas.

Ms. Martínez’s peace-building activities include:

• contributing to programs that reintegrated Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front guerillas following the civil war;
• training emerging civil society leaders in the administration and management of their organizations;
• designing workplans for organizations emphasizing citizen’s political participation, and conflict resolution groups, among others;
• helping select civil society organizations to fund and monitoring chosen groups’ use of funds; and
• researching women’s role in post-conflict reconstruction in El Salvador to coauthor the Women Waging Peace Policy Commission case study “Adding Value: Women’s Contributions to Reintegration and Reconstruction in El Salvador.”

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