For Red Cross Aruba (RCA) it is important to “teach how to fish” instead of only ”give the fish”. The protection approach of our Social Program promotes the enhancing of resilience of vulnerable families in order to help them to face difficult situations. This is one of our main concerns as a humanitarian organization. Our efforts are aimed at support Aruban and migrant families by improving their individual and collective skills and capacities also known as ‘coping mechanisms’ such as communication skills, diverse talents, social networking, self-steem, access to information, professional skills among others.
For that reason, on August 2019, RCA and its team of volunteers conducted 3 focus groups – both in Spanish and Papiamento- in order to identify which are the key ‘coping mechanisms’ of our participants. More than 35 persons participated and shared their opinion about which is the best way RCA can support them. As a result of this consultation, RCA volunteers designed 5 workshops and invited our participants to join: self-steem, public health, paediatric prevention, Papiamento classes and First Aid training. “I would like to thank you for considering me for the workshop of paediatrician prevention. For me is very useful for continue helping my children to grow up”, one of our participants expressed.
Each person worldwide has the opportunity to develop their capacities and be stronger, for them and their families. Sometimes, when families experience any difficult situation such as a natural disaster, displacement or migration, those capacities seem to be not stronger enough and they are more vulnerable to be in risk. RCA team strongly believe that this workshops will contribute to prevent that families are affected by those difficulties. “I would like to thank for the First-Aid Course. I ‘practiced’ it the same night with my daughter (…) Thank you for inviting me to the course, otherwise I wouldn’t have known how to react to this emergency. You cannot imagine how useful it was”, one of our participant said after she participated in one of the workshops.
Red Cross Aruba (RCA) is a humanitarian, impartial and neutral organization which has been working on helping vulnerable families in Aruba and will continue contributing to this goal.