Games, workshops and excursions, the glue that unites the children and young people of La Unión

Leisure is a great social catalyst, especially for children and young people. Through playful activities they can acquire new knowledge, get involved in social actions that improve their environment and, at the same time, generate friendships that are very important at any age. All the benefits that leisure activities have for minors are well known to the professionals at Fundación Sierra Minera, an entity that was created “to respond to the depression and lack of expectations that existed after the closure of mining in Cartagena and La Union”, explains the manager, Pedro Martos. After 25 years of work, this non-profit entity develops all kinds of projects related to training, social and labor insertion, the protection of environmental and cultural heritage and community development.

Precisely, as part of this community development, Fundación Sierra Minera launched a new initiative last January, under the name of Valere, whose objective is to promote the processes of inclusion and social participation of families and minors at risk of social exclusion in the municipality of La Unión, especially in the San Gil neighborhood. The initiative, which has been supported by the ‘la Caixa’ Foundation through its ‘2022 Aid Program for Social Initiatives Projects’, divides the participants into three groups based on their age: children from 6 to 8 years old, young people from 9 to 12 and adolescents from 13 to 16. With each of them three types of activities are carried out that adapt to their maturity: socio-educational workshops, leisure management tasks and free time activities.

In the socio-educational workshops, the professionals carry out tasks and games with the minors through which they try to encourage civic and democratic values, teach them how to participate in the territory and celebrate “ephemera with a certain relevance, such as Women’s Day or all those associated or related to the environment, that we work in an environmental education block”, explains the social worker and coordinator of the project, Lorena Vásquez. After this more formative part, it is the turn of leisure, “because we believe that there is a need in the environment to offer enriching and healthy recreational alternatives,” explains the professional. In this second part of Valere, boys and girls take on a leading role. The professionals of Fundación Sierra Minera or the minors themselves propose different activities and it must be decided, always by group consensus, which one to choose, analyzing what resources are needed to carry it out and how they can obtain them. The last part of the project consists of carrying out the planned outing or activity, which can be either watching a movie, visiting a museum or going on a trip to a park in the area, for example.

values ​​learning

The Valere project has an innovative character that goes far beyond leisure. The three phases of which it consists allow minors to learn knowledge about different topics, and internalize very useful values ​​and skills at any age. «They have acquired communication and conflict resolution techniques and have learned to negotiate and work in a team. Sometimes they only want to do things with the people with whom they have the most affinity and we have managed to break that circle and teach them to relate to others. That opens the world to them, because they know what happens in another environment that is not theirs”, emphasizes the social worker, who also values ​​the learning that this initiative implies for those in contact with these minors. «For us it is enriching. When you see the knowledge acquired, it makes up for all the path traveled. We are sowing seeds in each of them that, sooner or later, end up sprouting.

All these advances also occur among families, “who participate more, get involved, support the initiative and ask what could be done to improve it,” underlines the professional. This social rapprochement of parents and minors is, moreover, especially key in the San Gil neighborhood, an area affected by unemployment for which Pedro Martos claims to expand the resources allocated to it and increase actions in the territory “to promote the economic development and facilitate that the population can have better qualifications to incorporate into employment satisfactorily.