It’s been this year, 20 years of the Hermanamiento (to become brothers) between Salt (Catalunya) and Quilalí (Nicaragua) and for this reason, has been evaluated the trajectory of the Hermanamiento (to become brothers), in what way has been working, which has been the participation and the impacts and projects initiated during these years. In a moment like the current one, it becomes more and more necessary to evaluate with transparency all the public policies, and because of it, we reckon that this evaluation represents a good example to follow and an indicator of the grade of united commitment of the Comisión de Hermanamiento de Salt-Quilalí.

From the beginning, the Hermanamiento had the will to work to impel a participation solidarity model that would choose to help to be provided with instruments to fight the poverty and the inequality of opportunities, especially in the rural Quilalí communities, specifically in San Bartolo, as they were directly suffering the lack of access to the essential basic services. That is why, in 1996 the mayors of Salt and Quilalí, together with the UdG, signed an agreement to write an Integral Development plan for Quilalí.

In this situation, we were looking for a vision of the solidarity initiatives that attend but also transformed and, it is in this sense, that the projects that were impelled contributed with three coincidental lines: the strengthening of organizational and productive capacities (with the support of the cooperative UGAQ), the strengthening of formative capacities (with the creation of the Rural Institute in San Bartolo, with the aim to facilitate the access to a quality secondary education that promote a formed youth that would be forced to emigrate to survive) and a third support line in the sanitary progress (with the Maternal House and the popular Pharmacy, attention to the pregnant women living in rural communities in aim to reduce perceptibly the maternal infantile mortality).

Throughout this time, there are great the brigades of citizens of Salt (approximately 200) who have taken part actively in the Hermanamiento (become brothers), some one were teachers within the firsts years of institute and have collaborated actively in helping to grow this participation solidarity from town to town. Reciprocally to Quilalí, the Commission of Hermanamiento Quilalí-Salt have been the speakers with the Comission of Hermanamiento Salt Quilalí, altogether have contributed to grow up the values of solidarity and cooperation in order to promote a fair world and more united both in the North and South of both municipalities.

20 years later, all the initiatives keep on working in Quilalí, and mainly in sustainable way with the Nicaraguan own funds, especially the institute, which now is public and the cooperative has turned into one of the most important engines of development of the territory. In the municipality, socially, one can see the positive impacts due to the presence of young formed (boys and girls) that at present have big responsibilities as they are teachers of the institute, responsible of the cooperative UCAG in the procurement department, impelling productive progress, in the area of credit, impelling the women’s cooperative, and also others occupying technical charges in the departments of environment and agriculture of the ministerial office

Now, if we look all that work in perspective and in the frame of the 38 hermanamientos of the municipalities of Catalunya and Nicaragua, the united Salt-Quilalí trajectory implies a good practice of municipal cooperation that joins geographically very distant villages but that they have wanted to establish a united approach and of effective mutual support. We wish this publication, which explains the systematization of the process of 20 years of Hermanamiento, help to spread the experience, to announce it to the whole citizenship of the two municipalities, and at the same time, that contributes to inform and to make people reflect and allow the continuity of the process, adapting it to the new challenges of the future.