Venezuela ranks 71 in the 2013 UN Human Development Index. The country has some of the world’s largest oil deposits as well as huge quantities of minerals. Yet many Venezuelans live in poverty, often in shanty towns, some of which sprawl over the hillsides around the capital, Caracas. Venezuela has a population of 31.5 million spread across 881,050 sq. km. Spanish is the major language of the country.
In 2005 the Salvatorians opened “Casa Hogar El Encuentro”, the first shelter for homeless street children aged 3 to 14. It started with five children, discovered by a Salvatorian Father in an abandoned house. They were severely malnourished and suffered from skin infections caused by the abject poverty they found themselves in. A second shelter home, “Casa Hogar El Timón”, was then opened in the year 2008, for those aged 15 to 20. All of the kids have lived through extreme situations in their short lives (abuse, neglect, violence of all sorts, abandonment). In a time-span of eleven years over fifty children and adolescents have been helped this way. Some of the younger ones have moved on to the shelter home for the older boys where they find support to find a job or to get schooling so that they can thenceforth integrate into the community and build a life for themselves.
Catia in Caracas is one of the largest slums in Latin America. Poverty and violence are the two key words to describe Catia, where about one million of Caracas’s 4.5 million inhabitants live. SOFIA supports La Constancia school, one of the largest schools in Catia slums with 1000 pupils. Worth mentioning is the quality of the education delivered by the school. In the autumn of 2009, La Constancia was awarded two international distinctions: from the Organización Continental de Excelencia Educativa (ORCODEE) and Organización de las Américas para la Excelencia Educativa (ODAEE). La Constancia received the awards for its “excellent educational and social work” and for its “brilliant management”.
Status: Completed