Our second day of the Global Village Challenge began with further orientation by the local Habitat for Humanity office in Buenos Aires. We were given information about 22 de Enero (22nd of January) neighbourhood that we would soon be working in.
[Nicola explains what her group's understanding was of the issues faced by 22 de Enero neighbourhood]
It is located in La Matanza municipality which is one of the poorest municipalities in Buenos Aires with a population of 1.1 million residents. 22 de Enero neighbourhood was formed through a land seizure. There was a neighbourhood resistance process in order to ensure that families were able to stay in this location. Different social organisations helped to sustain the land grab and the neighbourhood is now home to around 22,000 residents.
The ownership is complicated with the national, provincial and city governments all being involved. Whilst there is now an agreement in place giving the inhabitants of 22 de Enero security of tenure none of them have, as yet, obtained title to the land that they occupy (20 years or more after the occupation first began).
The settlement is located just 24km from the centre of Buenos Aires. However, it is removed from the main access routes, lacks means of public transportation and paved roads, and is essentially ‘disconnected’ from the metropolitan area. This leads to long and time consuming trips to the neighbourhood , some taking up to three hours round trip.
The state of sanitation is far below par, and the area suffers from a serious waste management problem. The neighbourhood lacks its own waste collection problem, and due to transportation difficulties the municipal waste collectors come into the neighbourhood sporadically at best. This causes a buildup of rubbish, turning parts of the neighbourhood literally into a rubbish dump. The water that the residents have access to is largely underground and away from the housing area, making it difficult to find potable water for family consumption.
When it rains the neighbourhood floods, making it difficult to enter or leave. This causes further problems in daily life (school, work, etc.) and in the development of the neighbourhood and its residents.
[Our group gathers for the first time at 22 de Enero neighbourhood]
In the afternoon we visited the neighbourhood as part of our orientation before building work would commence the following day. We visited the neighbourhood centre run by the Concordia Foundation where local children were receiving after school help. We then visited a family whose house consisted of one room for sleeping, living, cooking and working in. They had three sewing machines in the same space and they work all hours finishing garments to make a living. Their ambition is to add a bedroom onto the house to separate the sleeping/working/living elements of their home.
[Concordia Foundation Centre]
In the most serious cases, the houses are made of sheet metal and cardboard, and in the past few years many of the houses have been created through a process of informal construction from bricks and mortar. Also, around the neighbourhood small seizures have occurred where people have built unstable shanties, home to families in situations of extreme poverty. The situation is made more difficult by a variety of factors, which make the issues of family development more complex through situations of overcrowding, violence between genders, and living alongside families from other cultures.
Our second day of orientation and in particular visiting 22 de Enero neighbourhood gave us an excellent insight into the problems faced by the community and the challenges we would encounter when the building works commenced the following day. We were now ready and excited to meet those challenges.
Subscribe