While the Tenerife countryside survives the effects of the drought, on the Dolores Gutiérrez farm (Güímar) the land flourishes at a different pace with the curious touch of a group of apprentices, among them African migrants, who want to find a job and get rid of the social exclusion.
Without a doubt, these green spaces full of biodiversity are created with the impetus of the El Buen Samaritano Canarian Foundation, which since 2022 manages a total of 15,000 square meters with the professional vision of Silvia Hernández, teacher and agroecology technician.
In an interview with EFE, Hernández explains that this initiative initially arose in a ravine area of ??Santa Cruz de Tenerife – the ‘Urban Gardens of Añaza’ – with the aim of saving the place from abandonment and helping people at risk of exclusion. social.
However, a calmer reflection invited the creation of “a more powerful idea”, which supported the regeneration of the agricultural environment in the middlelands, and then a gesture was “vital”: the donation of a farm, in Güímar, by the Dolores Gutiérrez from Tenerife.
“There was a need to give specific and professional training to people,” says Hernández while supervising the agricultural and environmental work carried out every day by his students, who come from different places in Africa and the island of Tenerife.
In the case of African migrants, who arrived on the islands after a difficult journey in a canoe across the Atlantic, this learning is carried out while they regularize their situation in Spain, so that they are heading towards a productive wait so that they can enter the world of work. .
“And the reality is that this is achieved,” says the agroecology teacher, who reports how these boys who have passed through the farm, more than 50, are inserted in other spaces in the sector on the island and with indefinite contracts after having their Papers in order.
The work day of these apprentices begins shortly after sunrise, around 8:00 a.m., until 2:00 p.m., and is combined with other training courses other than agriculture offered by the Foundation. at its capital headquarters, including Spanish classes.
Ibra Kama (Senegal, 26 years old) tells EFE that before leaving for the Canary Islands in a cayuco he was a farmer, but, despite previous knowledge, here he has discovered “an opportunity”, he has known another type of land, crops, as well as instruments that make your job easier.
For the rest of the people residing on the island of Tenerife, the Buen Samaritano Canary Foundation also promotes training and employability with courses to obtain professional certificates through the Canary Employment Service.
In relation to the farm and its crops, the beneficiaries of this solidarity project learn farming, planting, irrigating the land, rotating crops, handling utensils and machines, standards of care and respect for the environment, among other functions.
And then a question arises: where does the agroecological product produced on this farm go? This finds its destination in various ways, either through farmers in the area, clients who visit and buy, or through the Foundation’s catering project, which supplies food and labor demands.
And in addition to tilling and cultivating the land, this space seeks to become a place of worship for the natural environment and the biodiversity of the Tenerife midlands, which is why Finca Dolores Gutiérrez rests with rich green spaces and cabins where you can spend the night.
The students and volunteers of this project have been the creators of these accommodations with recycled materials, and which represent different ethnicities and types of constructions, such as the classic wooden house, a geodesic dome and a mimicry of the superabe cabin.
In the midst of this nature in which “there is always something to do,” African migrants work, joke and interact with a kind of innate curiosity, a comfort that has helped them deal with the family worries they carry behind them and that They seem to grow larger with distance.
And to help these migrants, forced to face the danger of the Canary Islands route, the Good Samaritan Foundation is also building BAOBAB on the other side of the pond, a school hotel to generate job opportunities and encourage them to “want to stay there.”
At the same time, and in parallel, “sustainable” tourism would be promoted and precisely because this facility will offer accommodation to the general public to raise “awareness of the problems that exist.”
