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Feature series: Voices from the frontline:
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Interview: Tackling poverty
(c) FOSIS
Ana Ferro visiting one of the 225,000 families living in extreme poverty in Chile who are targeted by El Puente.
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How would you characterize the community where you work in socioeconomic terms?
Ana: There is a lot of poverty in Pedro Aguirre Cerda. There is not a lot of economic productivity here. It's a place where people come to sleep, really. People have to go and look for work elsewhere, in other centres. This also means that the Municipality doesn't have a lot of resources. This makes it difficult for the Municipality to meet the demands and needs of the population, which are large because of the number of families living in poverty.
What is being poor in Chile?
Ana: Poverty in Chile means being marginalized from everything. Everything. Its like being "out of the system". It is being excluded. Poverty, I believe, is what limits people from being able to achieve a better quality of life, and to have more opportunities.
People living in poverty have less access. Less access to services, to the market, and even the limited access that they have is disadvantageous.
From an emotional point of view, I think that living in poverty is living with constant frustration and even desperation. It comes from seeing that despite all of the personal effort that you put in, it isn't enough to make a better quality of life. Its seeing that the conditions that you and your family live in depend on others, not you. And that meanwhile, "others" sometimes don't even care about your situation. So there is also a feeling of great isolation.
How does El Puente work?
Ana: El Puente works with families living in extreme poverty that have not had access to the services and subsidies meant for them. The idea is, once these families are identified, to get them benefiting from these tools at the institutional and community levels. This is done over a two-year period.
(c) FOSIS
One of the families of Pedro Aguirre Cerda community that participates in El Puente.
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Apoyos familiares, like me, literally show up at the doorstep of families living in extreme poverty. We show up and we invite them to participate in the programme. It is not obligatory that they do. They can decide not to. If they accept, we start coming to visit them regularly in their home, in their immediate surroundings, and ideally with as many family or household members as possible participating in each session.
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" You have to look at how each problem is related to determinants in other areas. This is especially the case with health issues."
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First you have to understand the history of the household: the things that happened so that they now form a familiar group. Then you look at what kind of resources the family has available to them, and those that are lacking.
You work with the family to prioritize the problems they face. You set out a plan of work according to the prioritization. You have to look at how each problem is related to determinants in other areas, and account for addressing them in a comprehensive way. This is especially the case with health issues.
What is the most visible impact of the programme on the families?
You see the impact of the programme in how the family relates to the Municipality, neighbours, and with the services that the government provides. You see that the feeling of isolation has dissolved some, and that the family is more part of the society. In general, when you ask a family how the Programme helped them, they say "to get more information". The programme gives them a better understanding of the services available to them so that they can take charge of their own lives.
Feature series: Voices from the frontline:
1,2,3,4,5,6
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