When Carmen Moran Broz left El Salvador in 1940, she always knew she would return someday to help her country. In the United States, she became a Quaker, and was convinced of the power of non-violent community action. After retiring from teaching in California In the 1980s, she returned in the midst of the Salvadoran civil war to establish education projects. A committee was formed in the Palo Alt
o Friends Meeting to assure that she have the support, financial and logistical, needed to keep the projects going. In 1986, she met struggling peasants when she joined an international group to accompany them back to their lands in a conflictive area, El Barío. In the belief that education can transform a nation, she helped them start a school in 1989. “It’s the quickest way to lift people out of poverty,” she observed. Illiteracy was widespread, and schooling unavailable past third grade. To keep children in school, she provided funds for children's’ shoes and uniforms and teacher salaries, in various communities. Quakers all over the United States contributed to the El Salvador Projects Committee to support her efforts. Working with community leaders, she convinced families of the importance of keeping their children in school and did everything she could to expand the schools. Now after many years, El Barío has a high school that is a magnet for surrounding communities. She had a knack for identifying communities who would work with her, some in remote parts of the country. Sending peasants to college in El Salvador would be a profound change, she thought. This became the student loan program, which boasts many graduates. The projects are now ably administered by Robert Broz, Carmen’s son living in El Salvador, and a local committee of community leaders.
