Helping El Salvadorans to combat a government whose actions against its citizens include bombings, tortures, kidnappings and killings prompted Brooke Webster to quit school.

Webster left Eastern Illinois University after her freshman year to work full-time for the Committee in Support of the People of El Salvador. At 19, she is the youngest full-time staffer at CISPES.

“I’m learning a lot, so I feel this is an education I can’t pass by,” she said.

Webster said she was in high school when she read the diary of a family friend about human rights violations in El Salvador.

It was then she said she “realized we weren’t doing the right thing (by giving El Salvador military aid) and it was my responsibility to do something about it.”

Webster showed slides and talked about her August trip to El Salvador in a lecture Sunday. The lecture is part of a series planned by the DeKalb Interfaith Network and co-sponsored by Wesley Foundation and United Campus Ministries.

While in El Salvador, Webster stayed at the national university and helped students clean up the recently reclaimed campus. The university was taken over by government military in November 1989.

She said part of the clean-up included removing decomposed bodies left by the military during its seven-month occupation.

“The students are the first to be hit (bombed or killed) because they are organized, militant and open in their beliefs,” Webster said.

She said the public must become aware of the government’s human rights violations under President Alfredo Cristiani and write local congressmen urging them to stop all military aid to El Salvador.

Congress will vote on it sometime in October, Webster said. “This is the first time aid will be questioned,” she said.

Webster said she feels “empowered” from the work she has done with CISPES. “I don’t feel helpless.”