A Dream Sewn True
A USAID partnership with Fundación Rafael Meza Ayau in El Salvador helped 160 entrepreneurs strengthen their businesses
Minutes from El Salvador’s capital lies Soyapango, a bustling urban municipality. Home to around 316,000 residents, the country’s third most populous city faces challenges owing to its high youth population, high unemployment, and historically high crime rates. For life-long resident Ada Gonzalez, this is the place she has always called home.
As children, our imaginations run wild, inviting us to dream big. Yet few people carry these dreams into adulthood. Ada recalls the specific childhood moment that sparked what would become her life-long dream.
“When I was 6 years old, I got the idea to make my own dresses. It was a wish that emerged from a beautiful moment,” she explains. “A seamstress used me as a model for one of her dresses. When I saw the dress, it was so beautiful like a princess, and at that moment I wanted to be a princess. From then on, I had the desire in my heart to learn how to sew.”
Fast forward to 2018. Amidst a very difficult moment in her adult life, Ada decided it was time to live out her dream of becoming a fashion designer by learning how to sew.
That, however, was only the first part of the equation. She reflects, “I didn’t have any financial resources to get my business started.”
In 2022, a close friend of Ada’s lent her money to start her business. As a tribute to the kind gesture, Ada combined both of their first names, calling the business ADAXI. Determined to become a businesswoman and improve her family’s economic situation, Ada soon opened the doors to her home where she began providing sewing lessons for women.
In 2021, USAID’s Mission in El Salvador and Fundación Rafael Meza Ayau joined forces under the High Impact Soyapango project to improve the quality of life for families living in the municipality.
Through its four main pillars of work — collective impact, economic growth, youth development, and early childhood development — the project tapped into the commitment of social interest foundations and organizations, academic institutions, the local government, and companies from the private and industrial sectors to work together to solve local challenges, increase economic opportunities for youth, and support early childhood programs in Soyapango.
Under its economic growth component, the project, in alliance with Fundación Salvadoreña de Apoyo Integral (FUSAI), provided training to microentrepreneurs to improve and strengthen their business management skills.
Ada took part in FUSAI’s 10-week training, which helped her identify her customer base and improve her business model.
“If I didn’t have the support from the High Impact Soyapango project, then I wouldn’t be sitting here,” she says.
Ada was introduced to the “stoplight tool,” which helped her outline ADAXI’s strengths, identify priority areas for improvement, and determine measurable action steps that would help track progress and achieve goals within her desired timeframe. FUSAI’s training ultimately helped her to build skills needed to increase ADAXI’s profitability.
ADAXI is one of the 160 microbusinesses, or small-scale informally organized business, strengthened through the USAID project.
Ada strives to help other women take their skills and learning to new heights. Developing women’s self-value motivates her to keep contributing her own time and resources to continue teaching groups of women how to sew.
“We are a group of women teaching other women to be able to overcome, to be able to open their own business too … so that women feel valued and see that they can,” she says.
In her words, Ada is “a woman who wants to take on the world!”
Her resilience throughout the entire process of starting and growing her own business gave her the confidence to take her dream even further– she plans to study fashion design at a local university next year.
Looking forward, she says that she envisions her future surrounded by women who she will teach to build their own businesses, helping them develop their sense of value and purpose.
Collaboration between civil society organizations, the private sector, government organizations, and municipalities to improve education and economic opportunities can help reduce violence rates, unemployment, and deter migration, paving the way for a better, safer, and more prosperous El Salvador.
The High Impact Soyapango project was funded by USAID’s Local Works program. In countries around the world, Local Works seeks to empower local actors to lead their own development, helping to shift USAID’s role to be a catalyst for local change efforts and processes.
Learn more about how USAID is supporting people in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
About the Author
Christa DeLorenzo is a Senior Communications Specialist in USAID’s Local, Faith, and Transformative Partnerships Hub.
