Federico Fadiga in Corrientes
It is a special day today in the north-eastern Argentine city of Corrientes. Red Cross volunteers from neighbouring branches have gathered in the city’s Red Cross offices to attend the first of six training sessions on nutritional security, hygiene, health and family care.
Like much of the country, Corrientes has for more than a year been facing a huge food crisis. These volunteers will have to train staff from the 122 local soup kitchens, or “comedores”, supported by the Argentine Red Cross (CRA).
This project is a part of a broader one backed by an International Federation emergency appeal, mainly funded by the Italian government’s development agency. The appeal aims to help 62,000 people in 11 northern provinces affected by the social crisis.
The city of Corrientes – which lies on the banks of the River Paraná, just a few kilometres from its confluence with the Paraguay river - is in one of the most vulnerable and worst-affected areas of northern Argentine. The situation in this region, hit by floods in 1982 and 1998, and by cyclones in 2000 and 2001, has been made even worse by the social crisis, which has seen poverty, unemployment, malnutrition, social exclusion and domestic violence on the rise.
Before the meeting starts, people greet each other in the hall. Most are college or university students, a good sign for the future of these branches.
“I came to Corrientes last year to study and I didn’t know anybody here,” says Natalia, a 20-year-old from Santa Fe. “I came to the Red Cross office, and there I met a lot of people and started volunteering. There is a plenty to do here. Last week we were outside the disco distributing condoms and doing HIV prevention. I like the Red Cross, and I would like to work in the humanitarian field in the future”.
Maria Veronica virtually has the Red Cross in her blood – her entire family is involved in the Corrientes Red Cross. From her grandmother, who is president of the branch, to her younger sister, who is less than a month old, everyone spends almost more time at the branch headquarters than at home.
Her eyes are fixed, but her words flow like a river as she remembers 1998 floods, which covered an area of almost 8 million hectares. She was 15 years old at that time, but she speaks speaks as though it happened only yesterday. “People were on top of roofs and trees, hanging from branches, waiting for helicopters or boats to rescue them. There was water everywhere, and we were going around in our dinghy, trying our best to help people”.
A deep breath and Maria Veronica starts talking about the present. She speaks like the doctor she wants to become, showing the pictures of a leper Corrientes volunteers saved from certain death. “He was left in front of the hospital in a desperate condition. Nobody wanted to deal with him. Red Cross volunteers working in the hospital took care of him during their spare time, and he finally recovered”.
The conference room is filled up and together with volunteers from the five regional branches are local authorities involved in the programme. One participant is Oscar, an officer in charge of the local Army camp. Together with 14 other soldiers and officers, he wants to help the community in “fighting the most important war, the one against hunger”.
“Relations with the Red Cross are very good here,” he adds. “We help them by packing food rations for the soup kitchens whenever we can”.
Gustavo, Maria Veronica’s father, drives me in his old, noisy pick-up around the suburbs in which the project is to take place. “Before 1982,” he says, “people did not want for anything here, but since that flood, the situation has only worsened”.
We visit a health centre, whose two doctors struggle to care for all the people who go there and whose only ambulance cannot travel when the streets become too muddy.
Back at the conference room, Alejo Garcia, project coordinator from national headquarters in Buenos Aires, is closing the workshop. He stresses the importance of the work new and old volunteers are beginning today, encouraging them without hiding the challenges they will face.
“We now have to shift from reconstruction to community building and education. We shall change our approaches to do that and work closer with people, inside the communities. Volunteering is not only a job, but also an attitude and a way of living,” he says.
The message is clear. There is plenty to do in north-eastern Argentina, it just needs the right spirit to deal with them.
Related links:
Argentina: appeals, updates and reports
Appeal: Argentina social crisis - latest operational update
Argentina Red Cross
Make a donation