Greetings from San Salvador, El Salvador's capital city! Over the next 3 weeks we’ll be doing our best to keep you updated on our adventure through stories, pictures, and video on this blog. But to get started, many of you have been asking us what on earth brought us here in the first place, so here’s a little bit of an introduction:

Every day, around 700 people leave El Salvador, a small Central American country the size of Massachusetts. Although the brutal 12-year civil war ended nearly 20 years ago, violence, hunger, and a debilitating lack of opportunities continue to drive Salvadorans to look for a better life elsewhere.

Upwards of 2.5 million Salvadorans currently live in the United States. They have left behind beloved mountains, beaches, farms, and families, and now you can (and undoubtedly do) run into them everywhere. Salvadorans are waiters serving your dinner, teachers educating for your children, nurses caring for your parents, they are lawyers and landscapers and bank tellers and reporters and roofers.

These are people seeking safety and security in the U.S., a country that sent a million dollars a day to fund their civil war. U.S. economic policies continue to make day-to -day survival difficult for the poor majority in El Salvador, and ironically many see escaping to the U.S. as the only way out of cycles of poverty and violence.

There are also the 6 million Salvadorans who choose not leave, many of whom struggle to survive, and to work for a more just and peaceful future in their country. Over the next few weeks in El Salvador, we will be following the stories of Salvadorans who have left, who have stayed, and who have returned. We have a full schedule of interviews lined up, and we’re excited to see how they unfold and what surprises turn up. Thanks for your support!

Jamie, Julia, and Dan-