At the moment of accessing Sant Roc, the evidence of marginality impacts the visitor, who inevitably wonders how in the 21st century there can be people who live in this state. The Badaloní 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 barracks of Montjuïc and Somorrostro.
A neighborhood that is home to 14,000 people, the majority of whom are Roma, with a high rate of foreign population, especially Pakistanis, and where 25% of the child population lives in a situation of severe poverty. The school absenteeism rate hovers 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 bleak panorama, the silent and tireless work of the volunteers of the Ateneu Sant Roc Foundation, an entity inheriting the neighborhood struggle of the 1970s that has evolved into the need to promote social cohesion, an effort that does not it has gone unnoticed by the La Caixa Foundation and many other charitable organizations.
Educational, social and cultural projects are born from the University that help alleviate the needs of the 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 shortcomings and difficulties that become chronic over time and that, often, pass from parents to children”. This is the striking summary conveyed by Salvador Figuerola, volunteer and director of Ateneu Sant Roc, the private entity that shares premises with the parish and that survives with 60% of private contributions.
The University carries out a structuring activity in a neighborhood that provides opportunities to escape from marginality. “If we were to paint a brush with poverty, in Sant Roc we have won the lottery” sums up Figuerola. For this reason, the sum of the twenty projects they promote make up 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 in turn break with stereotypes.
The Ateneo makes a clear commitment to training and recreational activities. They have several projects aimed at children’s and adolescent education, among which the toy library “where around 3,000 people pass each year” and which allows, through play, “to work on habits and skills” or classes to 90 foreign women who come to learn the language, a basic premise for thriving in today’s society.
The need to alleviate school absenteeism is also one of the center’s priorities, which offers study spaces and support in reading, working in coordination with educational centers.
The organization is no stranger to the serious situations of violence that have hit the neighborhood hard in recent months. They insist that it is key to bet on education in values, community work and support for teenagers who are outside the normal circuits. “For every difficulty, we try to give an answer” they summarize.
“The Foundation is a bit of everything” sums up Figuerola. A leg without which life would be much more arduous in Sant Roc, a neighborhood that no neighbor can imagine without the Athenaeum, the house that supports social cohesion and helps alleviate extreme marginality.
