Sample Travel Seminar Itinerary

El Salvador

The following represents a sample itinerary of a one-week Center for Global Education travel seminar to El Salvador. Each trip’s actual itinerary will vary based on program focus, length, timing and local events. However, this does represent the types of encounters you will experience, as well as the pace of the program.

Day 1 

4:30 pm Arrive into San Salvador. Transfer to guest house. 
6:30 pm Dinner, welcome, orientation, briefing session & schedule review. 

Day 2 

8:30 am Breakfast at guest house. 
9:30 am Participatory workshop with Equipo Maíz Popular Education
team, focusing on how history is interpreted. 
12:00 noon Lunch. 
2:00 pm Visit the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) and tour site of the November 16, 1989 assassination of the six Jesuits priests, their housekeeper and her daughter. 
4:00 pm Group Reflection at the UCA. 
6:00 pm Dinner at guest house with members of the Municipal Council of San Salvador.

Day 3 

7:00 am Breakfast at guest house. 
8:30 am Briefing at the US Embassy, focusing on the United States current and past role in the country, including US response to current political and economic issues. 
10:30 am Meeting with legislative deputy (congressperson) for ARENA (ruling party of the right) about the party’s plan for the nation. 
1:00 pm Lunch and discussion with FMLN legislative deputy (political party of the left and leading opposition party). 
3:30 pm Meet with director of a maquila (assembly plant) organizing project and maquila workers. Hear about the expansion of the export industry in service to US consumers, issues around job creation, labor laws and practices, and women emerging as dominant labor force. 
6:30 pm Out for a pupusa dinner, traditional Salvadoran food. 

Day 4 

7:30 am Breakfast at guest house. 
8:30 am Depart for a repopulation community (groups of refugees who returned to settle as communities in former conflict zones) in the countryside 
11:00 am Visit with community leaders. Observe community development projects. Time or interaction with community members. Spend night in community.

Day 5 

8:00 am Breakfast. 
9:00 am Visit community artisan project, a cooperative of mostly women that serves of a source of income for people left outside the formal economy. 
10:00 am Depart for San Salvador. 
12:30 pm Lunch at guest house. 
2:30 pm Visit Hospital Divina Providencia, where Archbishop Oscar Romero lived and where he was assassinated. 
4:00 pm Meeting with representatives of a women’s organization which focuses on preventing domestic violence and offering support services to women. 
6:00 pm Dinner. 
7:30 pm Group reflection. 

Day 6 

8:00 am Breakfast at guesthouse. 
9:30 am Meeting with leaders of a coffee cooperative that produces organic coffee; tour this cooperative that sits in the middle of land targeted for urban development 
12:30 pm Lunch at guest house. 
2:00 pm Shop at an artisan cooperative store. 

Day 7 

8:00 am Breakfast at guest house. 
9:00 am Meet with researcher and analyst FLACSO (Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences) who will talk about the larger historical, political and social context in El Salvador. 
12:30 pm Lunch at the guest house. 
1:30 pm Depart for time at the beach. 
6:00 pm Discussion of the work of FUNDASIDA (AIDS organization) and participatory presentation. This organization works with role plays, using case histories to better understand the difficulties for HIV/AIDS patients and HIV/AIDS work in El Salvador. 
7:00 pm Dinner on the beach. 
8:00 pm Final group reflection. Spend night at the beach. 

Day 8 

5:30 am Coffee and tea available. 
6:00 am Depart for airport. 
8:00 am Depart for return to the U.S.