Although one of Latin America’s smallest countries, El Salvador is a key nation to the U.S. Agency for International Development. The USAID San Salvador office serves as the agency’s regional headquarters for Mexico and Central America, and manages more than $18 million in regional assistance program funds, on top of $59 million in bilateral aid for 2009.
As director of the USAID Strategic Development Office, Melissa Francis renders program planning, budgeting, reporting and outreach for the agency’s bilateral and regional programs. Her job is increasingly important amid the leadership changes in the U.S. and El Salvador, and the growing emphasis on donor coordination.
Francis joined USAID in 2003, first as a management and program analyst and then as a foreign service officer. Before coming to El Salvador in December 2008, she served at the agency’s regional mission in Bangkok and at the USAID headquarters in Washington.
Francis has a master’s degree in international development and public administration from the University of Florida and a bachelor’s degree from Florida State University.
Devex met with Francis at USAID’s offices on the large U.S. embassy compound in San Salvador. She discussed USAID’s work priorities in El Salvador, shifting development trends in the region, and the organization’s collaborations with local governmental and nonprofit partners.
What are the major development sector trends in El Salvador?
This country, just like all the other ones, got hit pretty hard by the global economic crisis. So, I’d say that economic growth is still one of the major things, which has been hampered here by citizen security. As you know, there is one of the highest homicide rates [in the world] here. So, a lot of the donors and NGOs have been focusing on citizen security programs in order to provide an environment that is safer and more stable for business to come and invest. Education and health are [also] going to be big in any developing countries that you go to.
This is one of the CAFTA-DR [Central American Free Trade Agreement-Dominican Republic] countries, so we’ve had a heavy focus on helping with CAFTA-DR implementation, which is going to be morphing into the Pathways to Prosperity program, trying to help integrate these countries into the Central American Free Trade Agreement. We’ve focused on the small businesses here, trying to help a lot of the small and medium businesses not to get shut out by the trade agreement - helping them with diversification of their products, helping them meet international standards - for example, coffee growers entering specialty coffee markets.
For us, agriculture is not a big focus; we’ve been phasing out of that. But this government expressed an interest in agriculture. Education is also an area where the [Salvadorian] government has expressed interest. They are talking more about solidifying teacher certification programs, salaries - just improving the quality of the education that’s available. Also access, a lot of the rural areas are disadvantaged.
We have also been working at the national level for the most part on policy reform, helping implement the national plan for education. This government is taking more of a local view on education, so that might change.
As I said, public security here is a big thing because it has been hampering…economic growth. [Citizen security programs include] working with at-risk youth. Trying to provide other opportunities for youth who might join gangs. [But] it’s not all gang membership. Sometimes it’s just juvenile delinquency - kids dropping out of school. The violence here has been targeted in specific areas. But there’s also extortion of businesses here. Here, it has been focused on the private sector, where businesses have had to pay a tax to continue running. Trying to get kids from joining that activity and providing community support for them, integrating them into the workforce, providing youth with skills that match what the market is currently looking for.
What are the trends in the overall level of funding for El Salvador?
During the war period, it [USAID funding] was extremely high. If there was a hurricane or earthquake, there was a peak. But it has gone down substantially since the peace accords were signed [in 1992]. There was a lot of aid leading up to that; then it leveled out.
The government just started a new mesa de coperantes [cooperative table]. They are trying to help with donor coordination. This new [Salvadoran] administration has taken a big interest in trying to integrate the efforts of the donors.
We go to the donor breakfasts, [but] it’s more on the technical level with the ministries themselves to find out who is doing what in the country. But there isn’t a lot of overlap, I’d say. Each of the donors tend to do their own thing. The Japanese, for example, tend to be big on building buildings. For example, they just helped finance the Ministry of Foreign Affairs complex. We don’t do a lot of construction with USAID funds.
MCC is focusing on the northern zone, with that huge $416 million compact in Chalatenango. Even within the U.S. government, MCC is focusing on the north. We [USAID] don’t have a lot of programs that are focused up there. We have programs throughout the country, but the north is going to get a large amount of assistance from MCC.
They are trying to build a road up there. So, what they are trying to do is provide development-type grants in support of the road construction … helping people displaced by the road to start new businesses, scholarships for re-training, assistance to students that wanted to study agriculture.
They [MCC] just started their program, so their spending should go up significantly. It’s a five-year compact with almost $500 million. As the road construction gets under way, they will start spending some of their funds. But it’s taken a while to establish a local partner.
How does USAID identify and work with local partners in El Salvador?
It’s going to depend on the program. For democracy and governance, we work with a lot of local municipalities. Especially if you’re talking about working with communities to help with at-risk youth and workforce development, you really have to get to a smaller level. We’ve had a pretty good relationship with the ministries here, so working with the municipalities hasn’t been an issue. We have access to people: We know who the experts are in the area for the government.
We’ve been going through a round of meetings to get to know the new [government of El Salvador]. From there, we get permission, and we’ve gotten permission to reach out to other people beside the top-level people.
We do try to work with the private sector. We just hired a public-private alliance advisor. Our new person will help us reach out to the private sector. We have done that in the past, especially with health and education, which are two areas where it has been pretty easy to get the private sector involved in sharing objectives of the program and donating in-kind assistance, or sharing funds for the program. And that is done basically through pounding the pavement. Sometimes they come to us.
A lot of our grantees are contractors, so sometimes they have their own contacts. Sometimes it’s through them that we find out who we can work with. [Also,] the Salvadorian staff here in this office have been here sometimes for 20-25 years. And the country is very tiny, so everybody knows who the main actors are in both the public and the private actors. We have a lot of institutional knowledge.
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About the author
Andrew Wainer@AndrewWainer
Andrew Wainer is director of policy research for Save the Children. He was formerly a senior immigration policy analyst at Bread for the World Institute, which provides policy analysis on hunger and strategies to end it. He has also worked as a journalist and social researcher in Latin America and the United States. Andrew’s research and journalism has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal, among other publications. He holds a master’s degree in Latin American studies from UCLA and is fluent in Spanish and proficient in Portuguese.
