Venezuela Starts Its Own "Zero Hunger" Programme
By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Jul 15, 2010 (IPS) - Standing between two wooden planks that shore up the front of her small makeshift house, 40-year-old Maribel Huerta talks about her family.
She lives with her husband, a bricklayer who earns the minimum wage, and her three sons. The eldest wants to be an engineer, but all she wants is bricks, to replace the planks, posts, cardboard, plastic sheeting and corrugated iron walls of her home.
"We spend the little money we have on food and sending the boys to school. We've lived here for 10 years. Now we need to fix up the house a bit and find a way of earning some more money," Huerta told IPS.
Her house is crammed together with half a dozen other dwellings, some brick-built, some made out of very flimsy materials, on the slope of a mountain so green it looks like a picture postcard, on the road to El Jarillo in an agricultural area west of the Venezuelan capital, which is 50 kilometres away by winding highways.
Several families in this tiny hamlet are eligible for the "Zero Hunger" programme, launched this year by the state government of Miranda, an 8,000-square-kilometre province comprising mountains, plains, rivers, Caribbean beaches, part of the Caracas metropolitan area and some of its outlying dormitory towns.
The programme includes vouchers worth between 5,000 and 15,000 bolivars (1,170 and 3,500 dollars at the official exchange rate) to exchange for building materials, as well as distribution of food packages, health care and education, job training and support for micro-businesses.
The plan targets the lowest-income households that are not in receipt of pensions, allowances or subsidies provided by the social programmes established by the national government of President Hugo Chávez, in office since 1999.
"The plan is inspired by Brazil's programme; we adapted it to local circumstances in Miranda, and this year we implemented it, benefiting the first 7,500 families who were in a situation of critical poverty," Juan Fernández, its coordinator, told IPS.
"As in Brazil, we don't want to just give out charity handouts, but to integrate people into society, with a plan that brings hope to the needy," he said.
More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52169
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