Hormigón Armado (BOL-79)

Type: Human Rights: Children Rights - Country: Bolivia

Brief description and main aims

Hormigón Armando aims to defend and protect the rights of every child, adolescent and youth workers on street situation, supporting personal development and growth and the improvement of their living situation through an integrated and crosscutting work

The project's target population are the shoe shine boys and street children/youth, some with addictions and substance abuse as 2%.

Hormigon Armado works with a total of 50 children. We aslo help the childrens' direct family direct family as much as possible in emergency cases so in total we help around 150 individuals currently..

Main Activities

Cultural Newspaper HORMIGON ARMADO: The paper was founded 9 yaers ago and is published every two months. Each newspaper sells for cost is 4 BS, out of which 1 BS  is for the health fund that relies on emergencies and 3 BS are for the person selling it, contributing to cover their own expenses at home. The newspaper writes about culture, human rights, environmental conservation, etc.

Weekly workshops: Educational and prevention workshops with different themes are developed every Saturday. We work with issues such as sexual education, prevention and care of teeth, human rights, human trafficking, first aid, domestic violence, etc.

Support the technical education for Shoeshine workers: Currently this iniciative supports 30 lustrabotas (shoeshine boys) or immediate family per year with full scholarships for them to study a technical course of 6 months to 2 years or in other cases 3-year degrees.

Pedagogical Support: Children who study and work at the same time are supported with an economic subsidy to help cover school supplies and food. Children attend 2 times per week where they get as well support to develop their school activities.

Shoe Shine Workers´ Tour: The tour guides are shoe shine boys themselves who are trained, the tour is done around popular areas of the city of La Paz showing everyday customs. The coordination is done by the director of Hormigón Armado.

Volunteer tasks

• Monitoring and following up of the educational development of the scholarship holders.
• Street work-  having contact with the target population at their place of work 3 times a week.
• Contribute to the educational support for children of 6-15 years.
• Office work as required.
• Support in cases of health issues to the target population.
• Participate and lead workshops on various topics

Volunteer requirements / Skills

The volunteer should be:

• Responsible
• Active
• Dynamic
• Expressive
• Team player
• Friendly
• Social
• Respectful

Volunteer must be able to communicate in Spanish.

Location

La Paz, Bolivia. Hormigon Armado works with the target population that is located on the PRADO/CENTRAL area.