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A large portion of El Salvador’s population lacks access to adequate, secure housing. Women, especially those working in the informal economy, are disproportionately affected due to high housing costs and limited financial stability.
Raíces, a women-led mutual aid housing cooperative, empowers women through collective land savings, participatory planning, and self-managed construction. It fosters community, equality, and sustainable living.
Raíces became the first legally recognized women-founded cooperative of its kind in El Salvador. It offers a replicable model for inclusive, gender-sensitive housing development in Central America.
In El Salvador, half of the population (53.65%) of the dwellings have a deficit in terms of infrastructure, basic services and security and 40% of households do not own their own home.
The Cooperativa de Vivienda por Ayuda Mutua “Raíces de R.L.” was born in the year 2021 as an alternative to reach out to establish communities and generate the conditions for women to have access to housing.
The cooperative has the vision of creating a diverse, inclusive, humanistic, ecological and safe habitat; strengthening a culture of peace, and promoting sustainable human development to improve the quality of life of women.
Melissa Córdova, president of the cooperative, says that Raíces was born in the search to create community from and for women and their families; it was a matter of networking, of believing in the model of the Cooperativa de Vivenda por Ayuda Mutua, CVAM, as a viable alternative for accessing housing.
Raíces promotes the active participation of women, spaces free of violence, educating ourselves, dialoguing, respecting life in all its expressions; generating support networks in self-care, in the economic, emotional and accompaniment part that we women need so much.
After a process of membership consolidation and training in cooperativism, it obtained its legal constitution in December 2022 and is the first mutual aid housing cooperative founded by women.