I came to El Salvador for the first time as a Peace Corps volunteer in1970 and left in 1972. Later on, an official of the Fullbright Program in Washington DC advised me to meet Eva Rodriguez from New Acropolis in El Salvador. I returned to El Salvador in 2005 as a Fullbright scholar and I met her. In 2005 when Hurricane Stan was stationary in the country and produced one week of intense rains and during these, Illamatepec Volcano made eruption in the western zone of the country, the news showed thousands of people in shelters, I went to one of them at El Congo with Eva Rodriguez and Jose Roberto Lopez and I told stories. There I met more people from New Acropolis.

When I was telling stories to the refugees at the shelter, I realized that in this country, there are no organizations who teach how to tell stories and have simultaneously the interest and the experience to work with young people. Eva told me that there were several people interested in being able to use stories to work with young people, and requested me to create a workshop on this, so we made it in May of 2007. Many of the assistants were interested in continuing the workshop, so later I applied and received the flight ticket and money and returned in December of 2007 to work intensively with 2 members of the New Acropolis and to make another session of the story telling workshop. Telling stories is very important, because it’s a way to communicate important things and to create impact; it’s something that can be done for your own personal development or to express your own creativity. I like to help the interested people in store telling as much as I can.