The minister of Development Cooperation and Migration in the Town hall of Valencia, Maite Ibáñez, has informed that the Board of Local Government has approved the program “sustainability of families of sahrawi refugees at risk of exclusion”, whose objective is to provide food, school supplies and sanitary materials of protection for girls and children beneficiaries of the regular programme ‘Vacances Pau’. “This year, the project has to adapt to the new situation resulting from the pandemic by the COVID-19 and therefore, what we have turned in a new proposalintended for the same girls and boys that would have been welcomed in Valencia”, he said Ibáñez.
For years, the Department of Development Cooperation and Migration has supported the project ‘Holidays in Pau‘, a program family foster care temporary that is part of the Humanitarian Programs Temporary Stay of children and foreigners in the Comunitat Valenciana. Maite Ibáñez has reminded us that “these programmes are aimed at foreign minors in their country of origin in situations of social difficulty for different reasons, as are those affected by conflict, those that require a medical treatment that can’t be provided in their countries of origin or from refugee campsas is the case of the boys and girls saharawi people”.
However, the situation resulting from the health emergency, with the closing of borders from the 19th of march, and the uncertainty about the date of the resumption of international flights that has prevailed up until just a few days, made it necessary to rethink the program. “Both the Department of Development Cooperation and Migration as the Association Al-Adala, in charge of the execution of the program, we have convert the program in this new proposal to develop in the territories of origin of the saharawi population”, explained the councillor Maite Ibáñez, who has indicated that “the recipients will be the same children that would have been welcomed in Valencia with the project Holidays in Pau”.
Maite Ibáñez has noted that “the goal of the program is to provide food and sanitary materials of protection to a total of 20 boys and girls and their respective familiesto improve their situation”. The action also contemplates delivering food and materials first need to 21 families at risk of social exclusion, as well as school supplies to 75 children of sahrawi families in situation of vulnerability.
The project will take place in the Saharawi Refugee camps of Tindouf (Algeria), being developed by the Association Al-Adala, of Solidarity with the Saharawi People, and the cooperation of the local partner Brigade social Basmat Kheir (whose translation would be the mark of The well), a group of empowered women, all of them sahrawis, who are dedicated to helping, altruistic way, to the most vulnerable people in the area. The program, endowed with a grant of 15,000 euros, will last for nine months from June of this year until February of 2021.
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