NGO's step up to help Venezuelans. How to help
How to Help: Comparte por una Vida
By Pedro Rosas Rivero - July 7, 2017
Caracas Chronicles
This year I learned what it feels like to read a list of prescriptions your tiny baby needs, and know right away, that some of the things you will not find, no matter how hard you try, no matter how much money you’re willing to pay. I also learned how other parents, who are not as lucky as I am, struggle to provide essentials they couldn’t find. How they managed to reuse diapers that are only to be used once. How they fed their babies things they shouldn’t be fed, because that’s all they could find.
Which is why all year I’ve kept an admiring eye on Comparte por una Vida, a Venezuelan NGO set up to provide public hospitals, foster homes and schools with baby formula, food and supplements for children.
I got turned onto them because I’m a father, but I couldn’t help but think like an economist. After contacting them to write this post, I had to ask the “what if” question.
“Any intervention is only worth it when it adds value, if it’s better than the alternative,” the economist who lives inside of me kept reminding me.
So when I talked with Marianela Fernández, the General Coordinator of Comparte por una Vida (CPUV), I asked her what would happen if they didn’t exist. If CPUV and the other NGOs that are giving supplies to children in public hospitals didn’t exist, what would they eat? What’s available in these children wards?
“Whole milk, if anything. Sometimes,” she answered.
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https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2017/07/07/how-to-help-comparte-por-una-vida/