The children of the V district are the first who will be able to have a Casal dels Infants, in which shows, songs, workshops and, above all, imagination will be offered so that the little ones feel comfortable,” La Vanguardia highlighted in its edition of the October 24, 1978, one day after the opening of the Casal, in the premises of an old carpentry shop on Sant Martí street. Forty-five years later, the entity maintains its activities in the Raval, as well as in the Besós i el Maresme neighborhood, in Badalona, Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Salt and also in Morocco. From the 40 people served at the beginning, it has increased to 6,800 annually.
As Enric Canet, who joined the entity as an educator in 1992 and is currently responsible for Citizen Relations, remembers, it was the first president of the neighborhood association of District V of Barcelona, Pitu Cunillera, who promoted the creation of a space for that the children with fewer resources in the Raval would not spend so many hours unattended, on the street. This shoemaker managed to get the City Council to give them a building previously occupied by a carpentry shop, where university students from other areas of the city organized workshops and helped the children with their schoolwork.
“The hardest time was between the 80s and 90s, heroin, AIDS, did a lot of damage, there were kids who no one took care of, they suffered situations of abandonment,” says Canet, author of El celté pigues! L’inici menystingut of the Casal dels Infants del Raval 1978-1983 (Pol.len). Canet comments on cases such as that of a thirteen-year-old adolescent “who slept with his father in the open” or that of another twelve-year-old who did not go to school, whose role was to take care of his little cousins. “These are realities that were tolerated before but are now unacceptable. We couldn’t get the first child off the street, but we managed to get the second one to go to school,” adds Canet.
During these four decades, more entities dedicated to caring for the most vulnerable children’s population in the Raval have been created, but in the 70s only the Casal and the Fundació Gavina operated.
The director, Rosa Balaguer, indicates that the Casal was born from volunteering, a figure that continues to be basic in its intervention model. To the 200 employees on staff, about 350 volunteers are added every week in all the centers, a figure that could be increased to 500, Balaguer believes. “We have early retirees and retirees who maintain their commitment for longer, but young people now do many things, they are immediacy, and they are with us for less time, the ideal is that they stay for at least one or two courses. We would like to have 150 more volunteers, especially in the centers of Badalona, Santa Coloma and Salt, to reach the total of 500,” highlights Balaguer.
Currently, the majority of people served are of migrant origin. “Our priority is the education of children with the incorporation of their families. We work with each person on their itinerary until they can be emancipated. Now we are immersed in an internal strategy to explore how to take care of their digital well-being to promote inclusion, so that they know how to use the Internet critically, this world is key to their educational success,” says the director. Other challenges are strengthening links to reduce school absenteeism in the most vulnerable environments and working on the emotional well-being of children, who are still suffering the ravages of confinement.
In addition to its activities in Catalonia, Casal made the leap years ago to Morocco where it supports local organizations that work with street children and offer training programs. The global budget is around 7.5 million euros, of which 55% come from private resources and the rest from public sources.
