Venezuela: CAF contributes to recovering Vargas State’s heritage

CAF supports skills training for young people

Today the Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF) and the Fundación Escuela Taller La Guaira signed an agreement for the education and training of 90 young people in different craft skills, the purpose being to contribute to the training and placement of skilled manpower in activities that will back up efforts to recover the architectural heritage of the Metropolitan seaboard and to stimulate the economic revival and urban renewal of this area, which was hit by mudslides in 1999.

The document was signed by the CAF’s executive president, Enrique García, and Ms. Magaly Bozzo, president of Fundación Escuela Taller La Guaira, and the Spain’s Ambassador to Venezuela, Manual Viturro, was an honorary witness. Also present at the event were Jaime Barrios Morffe, Mayor of Vargas Municipality, and Ángel Moreno, the representative of the Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional (AECI) in Venezuela, who gave a brief presentation outlining the project.

García stated that it gave the CAF satisfaction to support this workshop-school project, describing it as an institution that learns from its own experiences and from contacts with other similar institutions, which has resulted in it obtaining good results after having been running for just one year.

The Escuela Taller La Guaira was founded in June 2002, sponsored by the Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional (AECI), with the idea providing training for young people in skills that would be useful to themselves and to society and that had to do with the efforts that are being made to rescue the architectural heritage of Vargas state. There are similar initiatives in Spain and other cities in a number of Latin American countries.

Upon completing its first year, the first group of 45 youngsters graduated from the Workshop-School, now better equipped to successfully enter the job market.

This first phase has produced skilled young workers with a good probability of entering the job market to provide services to a very vulnerable population, because of either social or educational exclusion, and has also contributed to improving the appearance of La Guaira, which, in turn, will have a positive impact on local tourist activity and trade.

The second phase of this project will train 90 young people in bricklaying, carpentry, electricity, ironwork and forging, plumbing, and gardening, all skills that are in great demand among the inhabitants of the central seaboard region.