El Salvador Encounter

All CRISPAZ El Salvador Encounters include: visit to martyr sites, grassroots organizations, a rural community, as well as speakers on history, politics, economics, and more importantly current issues as well as time for shopping for fair-trade crafts and cultural activities. Unless you tell us otherwise, we will incorporate these activities into your schedule with your input on special interests and requests. This will form the core of your itinerary. If your group or individuals in the group have requests for speakers or have a particular interest in one of the areas of your core itinerary, please let us know and we will happily do what we can to schedule with those interests in mind.

We give special emphasis in all of our Encounters to the voice and experience of the poor and marginalized of El Salvador. Taking our inspiration from Monsignor Romero, we want to give voice to the voiceless. We encourage you to address with your group your level of interest in meeting with people who also represent more powerful groups and other sectors of society.

It is our desire to provide for your group the opportunity to learn from various political, social, economic and religious sectors according to the interests of the participants. But, because your time in El Salvador is limited it isn’t possible to hear a variety of perspectives or see a variety of approaches to every topic you learn about. Your interests surveys will help us understand your priorities.

In order to understand the priorities of the group, we ask you to choose a theme on which to focus your Encounter. This will allow you to deepen your understanding of a particular area of interest and see more than one group or organization who is addressing the issue. Some of the basic itinerary activities can be planned in such a way as to tie into your theme as well if you want to deepen your understanding of a topic.

If not, the basic itinerary activities listed above will be your general overview and your theme will allow you to deepen understanding on that topic. As the organizer, you can either set the Encounter theme, looking for participants who are interested in that topic or, once you have a group together, reach a consensus on the interests of the group and focus theme. Either way, we ask that you communicate to CRISPAZ what you would like the theme to be at the same inquiry packet. Please send this form with your deposit payment.