Glasswing International

Glasswing is an innovative non-profit development organization, founded and led in El Salvador, that works in 12 countries in the Americas.

To date, we have directly impacted over 1.5 million lives, including over 398,000 participants in its education programs and more than 347,000 participants in its health and mental health programs. Glasswing has expanded to more than 10 countries, grown to over 500 employees, engaged 150,000 volunteers, mobilized almost $200M for programming, and partnered with over hundreds public institutions. Furthermore, over 60 members of our team are former program participants, who help inform and improve our work. We are constantly working with community stakeholders to ensure sustainable change, while fostering hope and community pride. Glasswing was selected as a winner of the Skoll Social Entrepreneurship Award (2020) and the first Latin American grantee of The Audacious Project (2021-2022) that addresses the root causes of poverty, violence, trauma, and migration in the Americas.

As an organization founded and led in the global south, Glasswing is a leader in positive youth development; trauma-informed approaches; community-based learning; formal and non-formal education; locally-driven research and evaluation, and cross-sector programming. To date, our work continues to focus on collaborating with communities to build on their existing capacity, strengths, and assets, fostering civic participation and restoring social cohesion, while engendering eco-systems that mitigate risks and amplify conditions for resilient and thriving children, youth, and families. Across these settings, we've found addressing mental health and wellbeing to be a critical piece of the puzzle.

Glasswing addresses the negative impacts of trauma by amplifying access to mental health in the most violence-affected communities in the Northern Triangle and throughout the Central American region. Over the course of 15 years of work in the most socially excluded communities, Glasswing has seen first-hand the catastrophic consequences of not understanding trauma and failing to address the root causes of violence. This led Glasswing to integrate a trauma-informed approach into its programming, which helps to assess and identify the signs and symptoms of trauma, while establishing potential pathways for recovery.

With the $42 million catalyzed by The Audacious Project, housed at TED, Glasswing is expanding access to mental health support at a community level to 9 million Central Americans over the next five years by working to rewire over 2,000 institutions, including schools in 25 of the highest-risk municipalities in the Northern Triangle, as well as every one of El Salvador's 30 hospitals and their surrounding clinics and precincts. As part of a strong commitment to evidence-based programming, Glasswing also works with research institutions, including the University of Chicago, JPAL, NYU, IDRC, and FLACSO.