Home ยป COUNTRY REPORT ON VOLUNTEERING IN VENEZUELA BY IRAIDA MANZANILLA GUERRA

January 12, 2010

Country Report on Volunteering in Venezuela by Iraida Manzanilla Guerra

IAVE IRC

 

 

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: 
In the XIX century, after twenty years of an open and constant fight to free Venezuela and other Latin American countries from the Spanish yoke, we find an unstructured nation. Everything that was established during the colony was destroyed or replaced by new rootless institutions. The only institution left was the structure of the Municipal Council.

Under a climate of civil wars, tyrants and dictatorships, Venezuelans were educated in a negative way. Lack of civic conscience and poor participation in the fundamental decisions of the country were the results.

In a badly constituted, weak, poor and backward country, it sprung one of the biggest riches in the world: oil. This unexpected wealth has brought with it a big distortion in the role the government and the citizens have played.

When the government became an almighty entity with countless resources, it also became a controlling, interventionist and paternalistic government that gives help. This has undermined the citizen’s capacity to participate with its efforts and dedication in the construction of their nation.

The government substituted the nation: it assumed all of its functions. This super-sized government, instead of promoting a self-reliant nation, turned it into a nation dependant on the government. In many other countries, the government lives off the nation.

On the other hand, the modernization process in our country was signaled by a development model based on the accelerated industrialization, without any socioeconomic and population analysis that had human beings at its core to back it up.

 

The protectionist government and its populist policies lead the population into believing that the government guarantees the best welfare for the poor, creating a dependency hard to eliminate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Historically, the implemented programs tend to increase the dependency of the citizens on the government, instead of promoting the development of the individual favoring the improvement of its abilities, through education and training, the participation in the work force and the strengthening in the practice of their civil rights and duties.

 

 

VENEZUELA TODAY:
Since 1993, Venezuela is going through one of its most difficult periods of its history. This is a political, economic, cultural and, more importantly, social crisis. Venezuela is going through an inflationary process and economic measures whose immediate result is the drop of the purchasing power and, thus, the impoverishment of the majority of the population. It is estimated than more than 57% of the Venezuelan people live under poverty conditions.

 

Strangely enough, the crisis occurs when the oil prices are high enough to produce a positive change.

The age composition of our population, in which more than 50% is less than 25 years old, supposes a big burden for the population of productive age, but, at the same time, it poses the challenge of the beginning of the century: a generational change, with a new project for the nation, with a civil society that is consolidated and that gets involved.

 

 

EVOLUTION OF THE VOLUNTEER EFFORT:
At the turn of the 20th century, the Venezuelan society was going through a series of social and historical events that influenced the creation of several welfare institutions. This circumstance originated different conceptions and practices of the volunteer movement, of philanthropic and charitable character. This peaked in the 1940s and in other countries it originated the creation of the social work.

 

At the same time, actions were taken that resulted in the active incorporation of the women into the economic, politic, and social arena in the nation.  Thus, several groups of women constituted volunteer groups of civic and religious backgrounds.

 

From 1958, the beginning of the democratic period, a process of organization of the volunteer groups whose priority was children and youth began. The model offered by the big American corporations present in Venezuela, through their foundations, also served as inspiration for many groups and people. 

 

 

 

 

 

From 1960, the impulse of the oil activity allowed to significantly increase the investment in programs of social and physical infrastructure. Therefore, urban agglomeration occurred around the production centers whose job markets couldn’t incorporate the most vulnerable social groups. This ongoing situation makes Venezuela a country of contrasts. It has many resources, but it’s going through a socioeconomic crisis that affects the most vulnerable groups of people. These groups live close to the level of survival removed from the benefits of modern social organization and the decisions that concerns them as citizens.

 

When considering alternatives to help Venezuela overcome its present condition an important role is placed on the strengthening of the civil society through civic education and the participation of its people. Volunteer effort has a protagonist role in this process.

The volunteer sector in Venezuela, as such, was characterized by a lack of systematization of its actions. The volunteer programs were offered by many public and private institutions without any kind of coordination between them. Notwithstanding, important efforts have been made by some organizations to carry out activities together. We can say there is some cooperation between institutions of the sector for specific cases, but there isn’t a definition of national policies in the field of volunteering that allows considering the existence of a global and coherent sector that reunites all the social actions of volunteering.

The celebration of the International Year of Volunteers in 2001 favored great advances in the joint construction of a platform that makes the volunteer effort a permanent manifestation of the Venezuelan civil society.

 

That is why the Federation of Private Institutions for the assistance of children, youth and families (FIPAN for its Spanish acronym) deserves a special mention in the development education of the volunteer movement in the country. Since 1960, and especially since 1981, FIPAN has promoted and trained volunteers to help their federated institutions (more than 70) and other public and private institutions throughout the country. This institution represented IAVE nationwide since 1971 till the end of 2001 when the legal figure of IAVE-VENEZUELA is created.

 

 

VOLUNTEERING TODAY:  A strategy of inclusion, social participation and co-responsibility

 

YOUTH PARTICIPATION:
Incorporating the youth to the volunteer movement has given positive results. It has been demonstrated that having a supervised and systematized social work experience with the youth, effectively contributes to their formation as citizens and to their personal development. Furthermore, it opens up for them job opportunities and it involves them with their country.

 

Youth volunteering is a educational strategy that tends to a very important group of the population. They tend to form groups, but not in a constructive way. They are highly unsatisfied and disinterested, have enough free time and endless energy that is not being used for the adequate development of their personality.

 

There are many organizations that carry out actions of education and incorporation of thousands of youths as volunteers with an unconventional global sense in the presence of problems such as: drug addiction, delinquency, teenage pregnancy, negative use of their leisure time, school desertion and family and social disintegration.

 

  • Scouts Association of Venezuela, YMCA, AFS, Asociación Venezolana para una Educación Sexual Alternativa (AVESA), Asociación Civil de Planificación Familiar (PLAFAM), Civil Defense, Red de Apoyo por la Justicia y la Paz, firefighters, rescue groups, religious and community groups.

Going through that experience connects the teens and youth with the social reality of their country, guides them on their vocationally and allows them to assume responsibilities, learning to heart the most solid human, moral and social values to educate a true citizen that contributes with the development of the country.

 

On the other hand, the main universities of the country have Developer programs of projection to the community in which students from different faculties participate. Two examples are the Catholic University Andres Bello, whose volunteer movement has been present since its foundation in 1953, becoming stronger in 1987 when they create the Projection to the Community Office and the Universidad Metropolitana with the program of volunteers Universidad Metropolitana (VUM) created in 1997.

 

COMMUNITY VOLUNTEERING:  
Initiating programs of community participation means to work effectively on the strengthening and consolidation of the democracy, it means to establish abilities in the people for them to become real actors of the development of their communities. This strategy of community participation emphasizes the commitment and social protagonism, educating youths and adults of the communities so they assume in a co-responsible way their leadership role, through the carrying out of shared communitarian diagnoses and the design of plans of participative action.

 

 

 

 

There are many longstanding organizations who promote the community involvement in the country, who look to strengthen the importance of the community and the local development, characterized by a integrating, participative and continuous process throughout which the groups from any locality integrate into an organized and trained volunteer group to define common development strategies, identify and implement main projects to solve problems detected in their communities. Examples like the Dividendo Voluntario para la Comunidad, the Escuela de Vecinos de Venezuela, el Centro Social de Apoyo Popular (CESAP) and the organization Fey Alegria are examples of this.

 

CORPORATE VOLUNTEERING:
Corporate volunteering offers opportunities for corporations to find another highly meaningful alternative to develop their social responsibility and to project their actions to the communities, incorporating some or all the levels of their staff, retired personnel and family members in programs of service to the community.

 

In the last decade important private corporations in the country have begun Corporate Volunteering Programs with different modalities and scope. Among them, it is worth mentioning in the financial sector Banco de Venezuela, Banco Mercantil (Commerce Bank), Banesco; in the telecommunications sector, Movistar-Telefónica de Venezuela and Digitel; in the industrial area, Colgate-

Palmolive and Procter&Gamble; oil industries like Chevron-Texaco and Conoco-Phillips; and in the food industry, Cargill and Empresas Polar.

 

Due to the boom of such initiatives, since 2005, the Asociación Venezolano Americana de la Amistad AVAA, with the technical assistance of the consulting firm Iniciativa Latinoamericana, organizes an annual event of Corporate Volunteering to generate a place for the exchange of the best practices, with the participation of international speakers.

 

COMMUNITY SERVICE AND GLOBAL SOCIAL SERVICE LAW:
Due to a legal disposition from the Ministry of Education, high school students must carry out in their last two years of schooling, 40 hours of “Social Work”. On the other hand, since September of 2005 the global service law came into effect, which estates that collage and university students must carry out 120 hours of service to the community.

 

On December of 2006, the global service law was approved, which forces every citizen between the ages of 18 and 60 years old to carry out 120 hours of social service in the areas that are defined as top priority by the government authorities of the country. Notwithstanding, this law hasn’t come into effect yet.

 

 

 

 

In these three cases it’s all about promoting in the youth and adults of the country, the solidarity and the commitment with the community.

 

 

ELEMENTS THAT FAVOR THE VENEZUELAN VOLUNTARY MOVEMENT:

 

  • The inherent natural and spontaneous disposition of aid and solidarity with the most needy, which mobilizes successfully in critical situations or national and international catastrophes
  • The power of appeal, of already established and successful volunteer groups, that attract the participation of people of all ages and social backgrounds
  • Youth training programs in regard to the values of service participation and citizen responsibility
  • The movement of leading companies in creating programs of corporative volunteering
  • The presence of networks and organizations with the purpose of strengthening and consolidating the formation and civic participation of citizens

 

It is hard to have statistics of volunteers in the country and their profile, but for sure, the celebration of the International Year of Volunteering 2001 strengthened in a meaningful way the development of the volunteer movement in Venezuela, above all in programs for the youth and the corporations. The challenge for the future is to harmonize the community service programs imposed by the laws with the programs of voluntary initiative, so they complement and strengthen each other and so they can contribute together with the development of the country.

References:

IAVE-FIPAN (1997) Memories of the Ensamble Voluntario, III Encuentro Latinoamericano de Voluntariado, Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela

Manzanilla, I. (2002) Volunteering in Venezuela. Paper delivered at the II Foro Internacional de Voluntarios, Santiago, Chile

Manzanilla, I. (2006) Comunity Service and social capital building. Paper delivered at the National Forum Universidad de Carabobo, Valencia, Venezuela

 

 

SHORT BIOGRAPHY:IRAIDA MANZANILLA GUERRA 

  • Sociologist, Catholic University Andrés Bello
  • Graduated from IESA: Advanced Management Program from the Institute of Superior Studies of Business
  • Former President of FIPAN and Liga Iberoamericana
  • Member of the Board of Directors, IAVE. 1998-2002
  • Founding associate of the consulting firm Iniciativa Latinoamericana, specialist in Social Corporate Responsibility