A first contract of three days as a cleaner at Fira de Barcelona, ??a second of two months of customer service for a well-known coffee brand and, currently, a third of half-time in a trial period for 45 days as a cashier in a commercial area. This is the work experience in Catalonia of Linnet Ríos, who in her country, Venezuela, worked as an accountant at the University of Zulia, in Maracaibo. In 2022, she, along with her husband and her 12-year-old daughter, landed in Barcelona as refugees and obtained temporary protection for humanitarian reasons. Linnet is one of the participants in Càritas’ Feina amb Cor program, aimed at accompanying people to promote their job placement.
Feina amb Cor celebrates ten years with the balance of 10,000 citizens served, of which 70% have found some work, the majority of short duration, as is the case of Linnet, who lives with her husband, who worked as a lawyer in Venezuela , and his daughter in a room in Badalona for which they pay 500 euros per month. This woman fits the profile of the users of this program: 70% have arrived from other countries, more than half are women and 42% reside in housing considered “not decent.”
“First I was looking for an administrative job but we realized that I also had skills for customer service positions. I started last day 3 as a cashier. My husband now has a ten-day contract in a warehouse,” says Linnet, in the Bon Pastor civic center, where Feina amb Cor celebrated her tenth anniversary yesterday.
Along with Linnet, María Biancamano, also from Venezuela and of Italian origin, offered her testimony yesterday. In her case, she left Caracas to join her son and daughter who have resided in Barcelona for a long time. She says that like so many other immigrants, she arrived “scared to death” about her future, about how to start over in a different country and at over 50 years old. “In Caracas she was a primary and secondary school teacher, I was also a manager in a restaurant. At Feina amb Cor we rehearsed interviews, I learned how to make resumes and how to look for a job on my own,” she details. She obtained her first contract at the Center de Masculinitats of Barcelona City Council, a three-month administrative substitution. “Since February 2022 I have been in a company that offers memory workshops and cognitive games to older people in four centers, it is a task that fascinates me, I love it, but it is only six hours a week, that is why I looked for another job in the afternoons and I found it in a large area of ??furniture,” he says. But what she earns is not enough to rent an apartment in Barcelona and she lives with her daughter, her son-in-law and her seven-year-old grandson with whom she is very comfortable, but at her age I would like to have a home of my own. “My dream is a job to become independent from my daughter,” says María.
Precariousness and job uncertainty is a difficult obstacle to overcome so that the profile of people served by Càritas can cover basic needs, such as renting an apartment.
Desirée García, head of insertion and training at Càritas, indicates that the majority of Feina amb Cor users obtain contracts of an average duration of three months and that, in 2023, of the 697 participants, 534 obtained a job. But she highlights that even if the offers are for a short time, they mean taking a first step to, little by little, consolidate greater job stability.