Help for people affected by fire, Valparaiso 2024

Dear friend,

February was a very hard time for Viña del Mar and surrounding areas, a huge fire that lasted for days reached several communities in the hills and burnt more than 9.000 hectares, losing dozens of lives. 

In response to this emergency, several organized groups started working on different areas in support of the communities. During the month of February we carried out various projects to help the people and families that were affected by the fire. 

In situations of catastrophe there are many needs and different problems emerge. As we work, we aim to generate activities around emotional support, mainly through encounters and games. On the other hand, we promoted and coordinated help from different communities and organizations, in order to provide material assistance to the affected families. 

In this way, we conducted workshops in shelters for play and emotional support, as well as volunteering to build tables and basic furniture for the families. The local company Geotecnia Ambiental and their team joined us for a full day to build tables for the affected families. We did a collective carpentry workshop day, managing to build 16 tables that were later donated to families at Villa Independencia. The goal behind this kind of initiatives is to support the social responsibility work of the companies, and at the same time cater to the communities specific necessities.We also channeled donations of food and hygiene items, managing the transportation and delivery of these to affected families.

We would like to highlight the constant work in alliance with Maderas Concón, Red de Alimentos (Food Network) and the Community of Solidarity Organizations.

Regards,

Dear friend,

Since the fires, we have been supporting families that lost their homes. Specifically we worked with people from Villa Independencia and Manuel Bustos, both are neighborhoods affected by the fires and other vulnerability situations before these events.

This help has taken two different ways: food and supplies for the victims, and carpentry workshops to build tables and chairs to donate to these families. For the first one, we work together with Red de Alimentos, a chilean organization who makes alliances with supermarkets to buy food from the storages. Also, we have been working along the Solidarity Organizations Community (Comunidad de Organizaciones Solidarias), through their program ‘Movidos x Chile’.

We already have been delivering more than a two hundred boxes for families (these boxes contain food and hygiene articles for one week). Also, we have been working with community dinners that prepare breakfast and lunch for free to give to the families in these territories. Through these organizations, we have given more than 7.000 kilograms of food.

On the other hand, we organized carpentry workshops for the people to volunteer as construction workers. In these workshops, we build tables and chairs, to give the families a place to reunite, have lunch, or just to sit on. This is a big problem that doesn’t take much relevance due to the complexity of the situation, but these families lost everything and simple things, such as a table, can make a big difference in their lives.

We will keep working along with the communities to overcome these difficult moments, where the winter is coming with the cold and rains, so it can be a very complex situation in the territories. We hope to keep counting on your help to make more activities with the families. Regards.