Healing Venezuela presents to UK Parliament.

We were delighted and honoured to present to the UK Parliament on 13 April about our work in Venezuela and the challenges that lie ahead. The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Venezuela hosted the online event together with @CanningHouse in order to mark the APPG’s Annual General Meeting.

Our CEO and Founder, Cinzia De Santis, gave a stark reminder of the current situation in Venezuela with distressing examples of children foraging in rubbish dumps and elderly people dying of starvation. Meanwhile, the once excellent healthcare system has fallen into disrepair and half of the country’s doctors have emigrated.

We are doing everything we can to help and Cinzia explained about Healing Venezuela’s various projects and their tremendous impact. These projects include teenage pregnancy prevention, financial support for junior doctors who stay in the country, a mental wellbeing programme, preventing child malnutrition and installing and repairing hospital water plants.

We were particularly pleased to highlight the great importance we attach to transparency and accountability as our key values. These incorporate a three-stage verification of donations sent to Venezuela as well as careful monitoring and supervision of our project partners on the ground.

The presentation concluded with a direct appeal to the UK government:

 Ensure the COVAX programme is properly and transparently implemented in Venezuela, with vaccine priority for health workers;

 Provide targeted support with UK government funds for awareness and teenage pregnancy  prevention project; and

 And lastly - don’t write off Venezuela.

There was also a lively Q&A session with the distinguished audience, which included MPs, peers and ambassadors. We hope many of the attendees will be able to support us, and Venezuela, in the future and we look forward to further dialogue with them soon.

​Many thanks to Andrew Lewer MP and Canning House’s Cristina Cortes for hosting and organising the event.

To watch the video recording of the conference please click here

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