Projects
Comunidad Los Rosales
Classroom flooded after one day of rain
Historically everybody - governments, neighbouring communities and shanty town inhabitants themselves - has wanted to see shanty towns as temporary and they have, more often than not, grown in a haphazard fashion with no planning for longer term community infrastructure and services.
Often shanty towns have grown to such an extent that is becomes difficult to subsequently find space, or indeed common will, to create an infrastructure of schools, hospitals, community spaces, access roads and basic services etc. Comunidad Los Rosales is a comparatively new but rapidly growing shanty town near to Punto Fijo in Estado Falcón.
Community members have themselves identified what their needs are and have prioritised them in a coherent fashion with the support of Fundación AFIN.
Pre-school group
The community is actively engaged in its own development and community leaders are being pro-active in seeking help and in implementing plans despite the fact that they are in an area remote from the capital and have less resources and economic support. Parents and community members have themselves built a pre-school but the current structure is both basic and too small to accommodate the growing number of children of a pre-school age.
Primary school playground and rubbish
We believe that early support and intervention to prevent later crisis is essential for the development of each child. This means trying to ensure that there are enough pre-school places so that children do not fall behind at such an early stage. Missing pre-school means that children will not have developped enough social or practical skills to start primary school. They quickly become too old for their corresponding year group at school, leading many to feel stupid, angry and/or embarassed and they end up dropping out of school altogether.
Veniños is therefore helping the community to improve and refurbish its existing pre-school building and then to build new classrooms, offices, storage area and a canteen. Once this is done, we will help them design and build an appropriate outdoor play area. This is a big project, and we see this as a fantastic opportunity to help a community to help itself. They have created their own plan for development that we believe it is a well-thought out and inclusive plan.