Identify the main challenges of El Salvador, and then prepare a proposal with a clear vision for the future, and define a strategy that involves a wide variety of agents from civil society to generatea political proposal that remains in a long term fixed agenda that benefits the population socioeconomicly. Also, the goal is to decrease the polarization that exists in El Salvador to achieve social harmony.
What will it do?
Its aim is to reach a national consensus by bringing together government, private sector, political parties, academics, ngo´s, amongst others, and set a common agenda to work in long term plans that will benefit all of our society, reduce inequity through sustainable growth development and redistribution. It is important for the people of our country to have the same vision in order to work together in the same direction seeking the common wealth. It is important to have stability no matter which party is in government
Who/what will it benefit and how?
It will benefit all of our society, but mostly the people with no opportunities or access to basic services like education, health, communications and infrastructure, by identifying their needs and working together to reach common goals, achieving higher income levels and better quality of life. The idea is that it benefits all of our society, if there is growth and development there is more for everybody, and a better society.
How will it be implemented?
I have already began implementing it. My original idea was to bring Bjorn Lomborg from the Copenhagen Consensus to El Salvador to identify challenges and solutions for my county. As I was looking for sponsors, the European Community offered their support if I did the exercise through all the Central American countries. So, from September 2 to September 9 I will be touring with Bjorn and Arturo Condo. In every country Bjorn will present the results from the Consulta San José and Arturo will moderate a round table of 8 people from different sectors, which I will previously identify. They will be holding a dialogue about the challenges and solutions regarding each country. After this exercise I will be publishing a special issue with the results for each country and a regional analysis. Based on El Salvador´s results, I would try to focus on the five most important challenges and look for national consensus on the solutions of these challenges to set a national agenda. I believe the exercise with Bjorn will get people interested and it will make it easier to continue in ES.
What is your role?
For this firs step (bringing Bjorn to the region), my role has been to contact him, look for sponsors, meet with people from different sectors of civil society in every Central American country, meet and invite people to the dialogue, coordinate dialogue round tables with Arturo Condo, previously identify and prioritize the most important challenges in every country (through a survey for which PNUD will be helping and based on the challenges identified in the Consulta San José), publish the results in E&N. As a second step, It is my responsibility to do the follow up in El Salvador.
How it will be measured?
Short term results will be measured in every country by the prioritization of challenges and solutions, it will be interesting to compare results in every country. Long term results, based on a follow up of this prioritization, will be measured through social and economic indicators for education, health, infrastructure, poverty, employment, crime and fiscal collections amongst others.
Does it meet the criteria for projects laid out in the project descriptor?
Yes, it is a very ambitious project which will make a real difference in my country and the rest of Central America by addresses several pressing needs. It also reflects my believes and values
Why is this project worthy of CALI?
Because it will present important results and information from surveys, interviews and dialogues from government and the rest of social civil society about the needs in every country. Based on the results, every Central American country will be able to have a national agenda and may, if they want, continue to work on it. Some which have already began doing so, will have the opportunity to confirm the results of their work. What I am looking for, is to bring social and economic benefits to our countries.