Latin America in brief: Venezuela; Bolivia; El Salvador; Chile
Latin America in brief: Venezuela; Bolivia; El Salvador; Chile
Monday, July 7, 2014
Venezuela: Social programs expanded in poorest communities
The Venezuelan government has initiated its policy of expanding social programs in the country’s most deprived areas in a bid to eradicate extreme poverty, Venezuelanalysis.com said on June 30. The initiative, called “Red Sundays”, involves teams of social program workers visiting poorer communities every Sunday to diagnose which households are deprived of certain basic needs and which social programs are required to attend to these needs.
The information gathered during the visits is then used to strategically plan Social Mission Bases in poorer communities.
These bases are community centres housing different social programs such as free health clinics, educational and cultural programs, and subsidised food stores. The government plans to build about 1500 Social Mission Bases.
Structural poverty, which is a non-monetary indicator based on the satisfaction of needs such as access to education, adequate housing and public services, decreased from 29.9% in 1999 to 19.6% last year. Extreme structural poverty decreased from 9.9% to 5.5% in the same period, reaching a record low last year. Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro has pledged to eradicate extreme poverty by 2018.
More:
https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/56794
