Help our Venezuelan Family
Donation protected
Dearest Friends and Family,
We hope this message finds you in good health during this historic pandemic. I wanted to share with you an effort my family and I are launching to help some close family members navigating the pandemic and the compounding crisis in Venezuela. While we understand that you may not be in a place to consider something like this, we appreciate being able to share with our community and invite ideas and recommendations on other ways available to support our family.
As you already know, my sisters, parents and I left Venezuela as I was beginning elementary school. At the time we were the only ones in our network family and friends to leave Venezuela. And now in recent years, approximately 4.7M Venezuelans have fled their homes. Driven by government corruption, violence, entrenched hyperinflation, and extreme food and medicine shortages, Venezuelans migrants face discrimination, exploitation, and sometimes violence while trying to rebuild their lives in new communities. Read this article I’ve written on Venezuela and migrants for more.
Over the last few years my family has been resourceful and resilient to survive in Venezuela despite a dictatorship, failing economy, sanctions, etc. But currently with a quarantine and increasing risk of COVID, their options have run out and they rely more and more on our support. Here are some examples:
● My cousin Legil and her son live and take care of my 91 year old grandmother (abuela Ana)in a rural area and struggle to find basic necessities and are without power or phone most days. While we used to send medicines and diapers for my grandmother, those packages now do not pass customs in Vzla and my grandmother’s failing health creates increasing challenges for the 3 of them.
● Just one month ago my cousin Eli and her 2 kids reunited with her husband in Spain to apply for asylum, after fleeing violence and poverty in Venezuela. One month later they are quarantined in a bedroom of a shared apartment and have no ability to work to pay for food or rent.
● Another cousin Jose Antonio, an engineer professor has fled to Brazil to find a better life for his kids and wife. He landed in Belen just in time to experience seasonal flooding and the COVID quarantine.
● Miji and her daughter and additional extended family have fled to Chile. Her husband worked as a chef in a tourist town in the Patagonia that is now closed due to COVID. Their savings have dried up.
● My godmother, an acupuncturist, once had a booming practice but now her clients have fled Venezuela or otherwise pay her pennies due to a 10 million percent inflation rate (not a typo!). Her daughter suffers from a rare disease and cannot get medicine in Venezuela to stop its spread. I was able to send her medicine from Mexico to cover a few months this past January.
Cabin-fever kids and toilet paper shortages seem manageable when we think of the silent struggles of our Venezuelan family. And so we turn to you, our dear friends and families, to help our family to be able to meet basic needs, food, rent and medicine during this pandemic. Unlike migrant communities who have been migrating for generations, our Venezuelan family only has access to the 5 of us who left Venezuela first. This is not an easy letter to write and we do so with humility knowing that with our community our family, like so many of us, will see the other side of this terrible time. With you all - our extended community in the US - we can all together help our family survive this moment.
We have started a fund here – pls consider contributing to abuela, Legil, Eli, Jose Antonio, and our other family members in Venezuela and in Spain, Brazil, and Chile.
With love,
Amalia, Patricia and Daviana
We hope this message finds you in good health during this historic pandemic. I wanted to share with you an effort my family and I are launching to help some close family members navigating the pandemic and the compounding crisis in Venezuela. While we understand that you may not be in a place to consider something like this, we appreciate being able to share with our community and invite ideas and recommendations on other ways available to support our family.
As you already know, my sisters, parents and I left Venezuela as I was beginning elementary school. At the time we were the only ones in our network family and friends to leave Venezuela. And now in recent years, approximately 4.7M Venezuelans have fled their homes. Driven by government corruption, violence, entrenched hyperinflation, and extreme food and medicine shortages, Venezuelans migrants face discrimination, exploitation, and sometimes violence while trying to rebuild their lives in new communities. Read this article I’ve written on Venezuela and migrants for more.
Over the last few years my family has been resourceful and resilient to survive in Venezuela despite a dictatorship, failing economy, sanctions, etc. But currently with a quarantine and increasing risk of COVID, their options have run out and they rely more and more on our support. Here are some examples:
● My cousin Legil and her son live and take care of my 91 year old grandmother (abuela Ana)in a rural area and struggle to find basic necessities and are without power or phone most days. While we used to send medicines and diapers for my grandmother, those packages now do not pass customs in Vzla and my grandmother’s failing health creates increasing challenges for the 3 of them.
● Just one month ago my cousin Eli and her 2 kids reunited with her husband in Spain to apply for asylum, after fleeing violence and poverty in Venezuela. One month later they are quarantined in a bedroom of a shared apartment and have no ability to work to pay for food or rent.
● Another cousin Jose Antonio, an engineer professor has fled to Brazil to find a better life for his kids and wife. He landed in Belen just in time to experience seasonal flooding and the COVID quarantine.
● Miji and her daughter and additional extended family have fled to Chile. Her husband worked as a chef in a tourist town in the Patagonia that is now closed due to COVID. Their savings have dried up.
● My godmother, an acupuncturist, once had a booming practice but now her clients have fled Venezuela or otherwise pay her pennies due to a 10 million percent inflation rate (not a typo!). Her daughter suffers from a rare disease and cannot get medicine in Venezuela to stop its spread. I was able to send her medicine from Mexico to cover a few months this past January.
Cabin-fever kids and toilet paper shortages seem manageable when we think of the silent struggles of our Venezuelan family. And so we turn to you, our dear friends and families, to help our family to be able to meet basic needs, food, rent and medicine during this pandemic. Unlike migrant communities who have been migrating for generations, our Venezuelan family only has access to the 5 of us who left Venezuela first. This is not an easy letter to write and we do so with humility knowing that with our community our family, like so many of us, will see the other side of this terrible time. With you all - our extended community in the US - we can all together help our family survive this moment.
We have started a fund here – pls consider contributing to abuela, Legil, Eli, Jose Antonio, and our other family members in Venezuela and in Spain, Brazil, and Chile.
With love,
Amalia, Patricia and Daviana
Co-organizers (3)
Amalia Brindis Delgado
Organizer
Oakland, CA
Delly Greenberg
Beneficiary
Daviana Greenberg Kye
Co-organizer
Patricia Greenberg
Co-organizer