Upon entering Sant Roc, the evidence of marginality impacts the visitor who inevitably wonders how in the 21st century there can be people living in this state. The Badalones neighborhood is one of the poorest in Catalonia. It has been since its creation, more than 50 years ago, when it brought together families from the Montjuïc and Somorrostro barracks.
A neighborhood that is home to 14,000 people, the majority of them Roma, with a high rate of foreign population, especially Pakistanis, and in which 25% of the child population lives in a situation of severe poverty. The school absenteeism rate oscillates around 50% and it is one of the three neighborhoods in Catalonia with the lowest income and a stable unemployment rate that reaches 70%.
In the midst of this desolate panorama, attention is drawn to the silent, tireless work of the volunteers of the Fundació Ateneu Sant Roc, an entity that inherited the neighborhood struggle of the 70s that has evolved towards the need to promote social cohesion, an effort that has not passed unnoticed to the Fundació La Caixa and many other charitable entities.
Educational, social and cultural projects are born from Ateneu that help alleviate the needs of particularly vulnerable groups and at obvious risk of social exclusion that populate the neighborhood. “We are a grain of sand in a territory with serious deficiencies and difficulties that become chronic over time and that often pass from parents to children.” It is the heartbreaking summary transmitted by Salvador Figuerola, volunteer and director of Ateneu Sant Roc, the private entity that shares premises with the parish and that survives on 60% of private contributions.
The Ateneu carries out a backbone activity in a neighborhood to which it provides opportunities to escape marginality. “If we were to take a snapshot of poverty, in Sant Roc we have won the lottery,” summarizes Figuerola. Hence, the sum of the twenty projects they promote form the axis that structures daily life in the neighborhood. “A large number of activities that allow you to find quality of life and a commitment to education” and at the same time break stereotypes.
From Ateneu they make a clear commitment to training and recreational activities. They have several projects aimed at children's and adolescent education, among which the toy library "which about 3,000 people pass through every year" draws attention and which allows, through games, to "work on habits and skills" or classes for 90 foreign women who come to learn the language, a basic premise to prosper in today's society.
The need to alleviate school absenteeism is also one of the center's priorities, which offers study spaces and reading support, working in coordination with educational centers.
In the entity they are not immune to the serious situations of violence that have had a hard impact on the neighborhood in recent months. They insist that it is key to focus on education in values, community work and support for adolescents who remain outside the normalized circuits. “For every difficulty, we try to give an answer” summary.
“The Foundation is a little bit of everything,” summarizes Figuerola. An apex without which life in Sant Roc would be much more difficult, a neighborhood that no neighbor can imagine without its Ateneu, the house that supports social cohesion and helps alleviate extreme marginality.
