Importance of Neighborhood Clubs

In most societies they are considered key and effective tools in terms of integration, social inclusion, and cultural promotion, especially in less developed countries and co-opted by social problems such as poverty, drug addiction, drug trafficking, violence, among others. A tool to save children from the threats that surround them, and at the same time break any difference of social-economic status in pursuit of skill and the fact of sharing a common interest and learning to work in equipment.

Containment against social vulnerability

These neighborhood spaces that provide non-competitive social and sports activities, informal education, dissemination of culture, and in some cases feeding, are erected in efficient restraints for those children and young people affected by a family situation vulnerable, parents without work or captured by drugs, and the lack of opportunities that affects their class social.

Strengthen and create social bonds

On the other hand, they are traditionally spaces that encourage meeting and socialization, being for example places in which people they can make friends, build strong affective ties, with all the benefits that this brings in the social, health and mental spheres.

A critical present that puts its continuity at risk

Knowing then of the enormous social contribution made by these non-profit civil associations, it is imperative that the national, local, and provincial governments, as appropriate, attend to their needs and problems so that they can prosper and continue to develop, and not that they have to close due to lack of resources and inputs, as is the case with many of them today day.

In Argentina, for example, the pressing economic crisis that has accelerated since 2015 due to the incessant increase in inflation and the devaluation of the peso has caused many neighborhood clubs to have to close their doors because they cannot afford to pay their water, electricity, and gas bills, which have become significantly more expensive after the removal of subsidies state.

Another problem they face is the lack of money to pay for the renewal of infrastructures that crosses them, because many of them are housed in old buildings.

Forbidden to forget them

It is important that the state review each case and, to the extent of its possibilities, make an effort to support those organizations that do so much good. they do to children and young people, especially those with fewer resources, because they keep them away from vices and the street, and offer them support safe.

In a time like the present in which relationships happen and are cultivated more on a virtual level, neighborhood clubs, which they were born in another time and are handled with codes of yesteryear (fortunately): appreciation and transmission of traditions, expression of feelings of belonging, etc., but which continue to represent in many places that unique and irreplaceable space for integration and sports and cultural promotion, must be taken care of and not forgotten.

Fotolia Arts. Alyonka_lis, Markus Kampfer