I first went to El Salvador at the age of 16. I had worked with youth organizing in my community and was involved in local peace and justice organizing, but I wasn’t prepared. On my second day in the country, a priest and teacher at the Central American University said to me, “Let the people into your heart, let them under your skin, let them ruin you.”

I lived in a small community called Carasque in the mountainous province of Chalatenango for five months in a one-room house made of mud and bricks.

Upon my return to the United States, I understood what Dean Brackley meant: I no longer fit into the system that my life was part of. I had trouble re-adapting to my house, to the supermarket, to my friends, to high school. I saw many pieces in my everyday life in the United States that contributed to the situation of poverty and political invisibility of my friends in El Salvador.

At the same time, I realized I had gained many things. I learned through my time in Carasque the true spirit of coming together as a community. I saw how a community that was forced to flee during a 12-year armed conflict, in which they were the primary targets, was convinced of its own ability to make positive changes on a national and international scale.

“Being ruined” meant changing my priorities, my vision, and the role I wanted to play in my society in the United States.

With those thoughts, when I graduated from Bangor High School, I became a volunteer with the U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities, working with a Salvadoran organization called the Association of Rural Communities for the Development of El Salvador. I was stationed in the Suchitoto region.

For two years I helped to organize youth groups in 22 rural communities, aided the educational processes and leadership formation among the groups and was involved in the mobilization and political advocacy of the organized communities.

During that time, I accompanied local and national youth campaigns against free trade and for positive youth empowerment in leadership structures. Through the association, the youth of 150 rural communities are organized and are developing the leadership to mobilize young people from all over the country at any specific time.

I am 21 years old and now work as the San Salvador co-coordinator for the U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities. In the current context of events in the United States and El Salvador, in which our governments neither represent our interests nor present a face to the world that we could be proud to show, I think that the work of Sister Cities is growing more important.

Through relationships between communities, we define and strengthen our shared values of justice and solidarity, and strengthen an alternative model to what our governments present – building healthy communities and healthy relationships from the ground up.