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Impact · El Salvador

El Salvador, since 2009.

Three shelters. Local staff. Gang-network risk.

Country at a glance
Programs3 shelters · 2 clubs
Daughters in care412
Local staff41
Operating since2009
Country DirectorFaith Wanjiku
412
Daughters in
active care
3
Residential
shelters
2
Community
girls' clubs
96%
Twelve-month
retention rate
On the ground

Where we work in El Salvador.

Our El Salvador program is anchored in three cities spread across the country's San Salvador and central El Salvador. Every site is staffed by Salvadoran social workers, counsellors, and house mothers, and partnered with local police and county authorities.

01San SalvadorNational HQ · Intake shelter · 18 staff
02Santa AnaRestoration shelter · 2 community clubs · 14 staff
03San MiguelLong-stay shelter · School partnership · 9 staff
Salvadoran landscape
The central El SalvadorSanta Ana to San Miguel. Highland trade routes that are also trafficking corridors. Our shelters sit at the choke points.
Local leadership

Led by Salvadoran staff, for El Salvador.

Faith Wanjiku
Country Director

Faith Wanjiku

El Salvador Country Director · with us since 2012

Faith trained as a clinical social worker at the University of San Salvador and spent seven years in county child protective services before joining the Daughter Project. She rebuilt our Santa Ana intake protocol, opened the San Miguel long-stay shelter, and now leads forty-one staff across three sites. She lives in San Salvador with her husband and two daughters.

— "We do not rescue girls. We walk them home."
Our model in El Salvador

Three stages. One country.

Every Daughter Project country runs the same three-stage model. Here is how it shows up on the ground in El Salvador right now.

01

Prevention

Eight community-led girls' clubs in Santa Ana and San Miguel. Weekly curriculum, mentorship from local women, and family-level engagement that stops exploitation before it starts.

14,200Girls equipped
02

Intervention

Twenty-four-hour shelter intake in partnership with the El Salvador National Police anti-trafficking unit. Trauma-informed medical, legal, and counselling care from hour one.

412Active in care
03

Restoration

Long-stay therapeutic care, schooling, vocational training, and family reunification with twelve months of follow-up. We stay until she is fully home.

87Reunified last year
Wanjiku
A daughter's story · Santa Ana

Wanjiku, restored 2022.

From the markets of Santa Ana to a classroom of her own.

Wanjiku was thirteen when a trafficker offered her family money to send her to San Salvador for "school work." She landed in a market stall instead, locked in at night, beaten in the day. A neighbour spotted her through a window and called our Santa Ana intake line.

Within six hours she was in our shelter. Within six months she was reading again. Within eighteen months she was reunified with an aunt who had been searching for her since she disappeared. Today she is fifteen, in Form Two at a county school, and wants to be a nurse.

— Faith Wanjiku, Country Director
Local partners

We do not work alone.

Every rescue in El Salvador is a partnership. These are the agencies, NGOs, and institutions that share the work with us on the ground.

El Salvador National Police ANPPCAN World Vision El Salvador Daystar University County of Uasin Gishu San Miguel County Children's Office San Salvador Women's Hospital
Keep exploring

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