Bolivia > Puerto Camacho > The project
The Project
The FH mission is to walk with churches, leaders and families to overcome all forms of human poverty. Our aim is to end poverty in Puerto Camacho in one generation through empowering the community to discover and develop their own potential. We hope to see the residents become the agents of change to break the poverty cycle and continue meeting their own needs with confidence beyond the life of the FH project.
Despite the circumstances into which they are born, each child has a unique potential. In places like Puerto Camacho this potential is never given the opportunity to fully develop. We believe that by unlocking this potential, we can unlock poverty and end it in one generation. This was the experience of Oscar Montes, FH Bolivia Director. Click here to read about his experience.
After six months of carefully identifying the specific needs in Puerto Camacho with the participation of the community, FH began a community development programme beginning with 100 children and their families, 5 community leaders and the local church to facilitate the development of the community as follows:
Families
Leaders
Local Church
The above project is based on Transformational Community Development Focused on Children. Although we work with various groups in the community (families, leaders and the church), our primary focus is children. The reasons for this are:
- Tackling poverty from the roots to bring holistic and sustainable development involves a shift in mindset as well as new ways of thinking and acting. Although it is important to work with adults, children are able to adopt new ideas much more easily and quickly than adults. Therefore to invest our resources wherewhere we are likely to make long term and sustainable impact, we focus on children.
- 50% of the Bolivian population is made up of children and young people. Therefore they are not only Bolivia’s future, but also its present. If we want to take an important step in development in Bolivia, we must focus on this segment of the population.
- Real and sustainable change requires long term investment. These children will very soon become the parents and leaders of the community. By investing in the children of today, we are investing in Puerto Camacho’s tomorrow. The support and teaching we give the children today will give the community a solid foundation of knowledge, principles, and behaviours which will lift them out of and keep them out of poverty in the future.
However, a child is not an island and is of course affected by its environment. If that environment is left as it is, the child will experience a clash between what it hears in our programme and what it hears outside. Therefore, although our main focus is on children, we also work with the parties that make up their immediate environment: their families, local community leaders and the church.
Downloadable material
To read in detail about why we chose to start working in the city of El Alto, how we chose the area of Puerto Camacho and how we planned the project with the participation of the community click here or to download a summray brochure please click here