Bolivia > Puerto Camacho > Team
Please click on the links below for answers to common questions.
Who are FH?FH (Food for the Hungry) is a Christian relief and development organisation. We work amongst extremely poor communities across 26 countries in Africa, Asia, and South America. Founded in 1971, we now have over 2000 staff world wide, over 90% of whom are local to their country of work. We have over 30 years experience in conducting community development programmes that meet the needs of local people in culturally sensitive ways. For more information click here to see the FH/UK site.
Residents of Puerto Camacho have begun their journey towards a better future, but they need external support to help make this dream a reality. We are committed to walking with the community and to sending the appropriate staff, ideas and resources required to facilitate this change. However, we are only able to provide this with the valued support of individuals, groups, and churches that join with us financially. You can play a role in the change story of Puerto Camacho by becoming a sponsor of the community, giving a one off gift, becoming an advocate, or praying for or visiting the community. Please see the Support now section for more details.
You can give a monthly amount or one off gift of your choosing to help unlock Puerto Camacho from poverty. All contributions made during the programme go towards securing the long term future of this community.
Monthly sponsors are not committed to any length of time and can stop sponsorship support at any point. This type of sponsorship is designed to ensure the maximum possible gets to the community and as little as possible is required for administration.
Examples of what your monthly support could provide:
£15 supports one child in our programme; unlocking potential for a brighter future£25 a month funds funding for five local leaders; training them to increasingly
resolve the problems in the community
£50 enables us to work with ten families; identifying and overcoming causes of
poverty through home visits
£200 a month provides the salary of an FH staff member in Puerto Camacho
Please see the Support now section for more details.
As a sponsor you will receive:
Your support goes towards the implementation of the various components of the FH project as described in the project section. This project is designed to empower Puerto Camacho residents to discover and use their own potential to unlock themselves from poverty, and equip them with the tools to be able to continue to sustain themselves in the future.
To achieve this, the most important resource your support funds is the staff we send to the Puerto Camacho. Our staff walk alongside the community and share knowledge, expertise and skills which encourage, educate and practically help the community lift itself out of poverty.
How much does the project cost?
There isn’t a set price tag for the development of a community. In a poverty situation, there are multiple areas of need. The resources to meet these needs are limited. The minimum required per year to enable the project to run is £25,000, however with increased funding we will be better able to meet these needs. This is why FH Bolivia’s actions are focused on what is called the “irreducible minimum”:
- Needs which are a priority from a wholistic viewpoint (the needs that most restrict the development of the children)
- Actions that with a small investment (or the resources available to us) can create an important and perceptible impact
- Actions where the individual child and their environment (family, community, government) are impacted at the same time
The “irreducible minimum” is principally funded by sponsorship funds and “irreducible minimum” actions are a part of what is needed to achieve the complete development of a community and its children (i.e. meeting all of their needs).
The irreducible minimum in the case of Puerto Camacho are the FH Project components. These are the minimum actions we can carry out which we believe will make an impact. For more details about the project click here.
We come alongside the community by helping and equipping:
In the first year of the project in Puerto Camacho (Oct 09-Oct 10) we will begin by working with:
Working alongside families, leaders and churches is key to ensuring sustainable change as they will remain in the community after the FH project. The families, leaders and church in Puerto Camacho are already collaborating with FH, giving their time and efforts to learn how to take responsibility for the development of the community.
To see the change we hope for in Puerto Camacho will take long term commitment. We are committed to walking alongside this community until it is able to continue functioning and meeting their own needs with confidence. This process is likely to take between 10 – 15 years. By equipping others, our aim is to work ourselves out of a job; to create independency within the community instead of dependency on outside help.
The physical symptoms of poverty, such as hunger, poor living conditions, bad health etc, all have deeper roots. In order to change the symptoms we have to tackle their root causes and look at why people remain in poverty. According to Darrow Miller, physical poverty is rooted in a culture of poverty: a set of ideas in which a group believes, ideas that produce certain conducts, which then result in poverty. For example, the common thinking in Puerto Camacho is ‘we were born poor, we will die poor and there is nothing we can do about it”. We educate against such thinking to release people from the inevitable consequences that this kind of thinking will have. On the contrary, each person in this community has value and potential, which if developed, would bring change and development. We believe that the Bible is the source of truth and seek to replace incorrect ways of thinking with truths which lead to actions which bring change and prosperity.
We therefore believe that poverty is not just physical and therefore that the answer to poverty is not met by administering physical solutions alone. Poverty goes deeper than just material needs and is a result of a mixture of much more complicated problems, which are often founded on a matrix of false beliefs, economic failure and broken relationships. For this reason, we also work to address the social, emotional and spiritual problems in a given community so that poverty in all its forms, which we believe are all connected, is addressed.
At the same time we are sensitive to local and cultural issues. Our staff for this project are from the city of El Alto, to which Puerto Camacho is home, who therefore have the benefit of understanding culture and tradition, and have first hand experience of the issues the program is designed to deal with.
Will you only be working in Puerto Camacho?
We are starting our operations in El Alto in one of the poorest areas: Puerto Camacho. However, the project has been designed in such a way that it can easily be replicated in other areas.
Our vision is to successfully begin the project in Puerto Camacho and roll it out to other neighbourhoods within District 7 and then other Districts within El Alto, as and when God leads. By training and equipping people in Puerto Camacho we hope that they will then share their knowledge and experience with others in El Alto as part of future FH projects in other areas.
Although this will require significant funding we trust that as God leads us to expand, He will also raise up people to join with us financially to make it possible. It is a big vision but we believe it is God’s vision and that He will lead. Until then we will focus in doing our best to faithfully serve God to the best of our ability in the project that He has already started and placed in our care in Puerto Camacho.
If you have any further questions or would like to talk about any aspect of our work in Puerto Camacho or sponsoring the community, we would love to hear from you. Contact details are available in the ‘contact us’ section of the main menu.