The social program “Casa Maren” is located in the heart of the urban settlement “Brisas del Jardín” in the northeast area of Medellin. This neighborhood is an illegal settlement as the land belongs to the government or it is privately owned. The children in the area are sons and daughters of internally displaced people (IDP) who moved from the countryside and settled in the hills of the city. Families live in very precarious conditions and lack basic services like water and sewage. The houses are extremely unsafe structurally; they are built from very poor quality materials on unstable soil. Tragedies are not uncommon during the raining season with land slides leading to collapses and casualties that include kids.
Brisas del Jardín was established in 1984 by people who moved from other neighborhoods as a result of the violence in the city, the lack of employment opportunities, and poverty in general. However, a large portion of today’s population arrived in the 1990’s following the increasing war in the countryside. There approximately 500 families living in Brisas del Jardín, 200 or more of which are IDP.
There is a major need for social services in the community. The social, educational, and health services offered by the government are clearly insufficient and from other areas in the city is drastically limited by the geographical isolation of the neighborhood.
Profile of the Families of the Children Assisted in Casa Maren
Parents of the children assisted through the social program “Casa Maren” are uneducated and sometimes illiterate. They commonly do not have formal jobs and struggle to make a living for their families. Adults often times work helping in construction sites, cleaning and cooking in private houses, selling candies in the streets and even begging.
A typical family from Brisas del Jardín has the mother as the head of the house because the father either abandoned them of was a victim of the violence in the country. Sometimes a stepfather is brought into the family in an effort to help the family make a living and not necessarily for love.
SOCIAL PROGRAM CASA KARAH
Characteristics of the Area Impacted by the program
The social program Casa Karah is located in the neighborhoods of Guayaquil/Barrio Triste in Medellin-Colombia. This sector of the city is a reflection of the acute social problems that exist in the country and the extent of poverty in major cities. Guayaquil/Barrio Triste is locally known as a focus point for prostitution, vagabondism, drug dealing, and delinquency in general. The children face extreme poverty, lack of educational opportunities, family violence, and in some cases sexual abuse.
Most of the children assisted in Casa Karah live with their families under very precarious conditions. Each family pays a daily rent for what is called a “unit”. Units are small rooms (10ft x 15ft or smaller) with no windows and one or two old mattresses on the floor. The daily rent they pay, however, is relatively expensive but families have not choice since their source of income is very uncertain to pay monthly rents. The units are located in “lodges” some of which could have as few as 5 rooms or as much as 50 rooms. Families living in these “lodges” share toilets, showers, kitchen, sinks, etc. The lodges are cities inside the city where the main objective is to survive. They constitute a completely different world where poverty, lack of hygiene, and social problems prevail.
Families of the Children in Casa Karah
Most of the families assisted through in Casa Karah live in lodges. Parents of these children do not have formal jobs and struggle to make a living. Some of them support their families through informal activities like recycling, selling candies in the streets, and washing the clothes of other people. Others turn to less dignifying and sometimes illegal means such as mendicancy, prostitution, and various forms of delinquency (including stealing and drug dealing).
Families are commonly headed by single mothers and the situation of extreme need forces the older children to work from a very early age. The level of education of the parents is very limited, which seriously restricts their opportunities for better employment.
Mothers do not have time to spend with their children as the struggling to make a living for the families absorbs every effort. Therefore, children are not exposed to any rules at home, nor they have a role model to follow. Commonly, children receive little or no affection at all, and are mistreated by their parents. Families are dysfunctional because roles are switched/distorted; older children adopt the role of adults as they are somewhat forced by their situation to help supporting their families financially, and become authority figures for younger siblings. This environment makes children prone to leave their homes and live in the streets.
