San Cayetano

IARCOS has realised many achievements in San Cayetano:

• Improvement of social housing





During the month of November, IARCOS helped, along with neighboring district of San Cayetano, building a house for a family, George and Soledad. This family had been identified by neighbors as particularly needy. Their house was extremely precarious and didn’t protect them from the bad weather and pollution.

In this area regularly affected by flooding, it was important to isolate the floor with waterproofing materials. The walls consisted of panels made of straps, very common method of construction in the U.S., reinforced pallets, which otherwise would have become a waste. These panels were finally assembled. This type of construction is a requirement for energy and non-renewable natural resources far below that of traditional building with masonry, and is much easier to recover, re-use or recycle, if housing should be remodeled or dismantled.





• Professional training





While helping the family to improve their living conditions, this activity of housing improvement served as a model and as a training tool for the other residents of this neighborhood. In fact, IARCOS created there the first construction workshop, teaching unusual construction methods.

Shortly after, IARCOS created a carpentry workshop for "Young Environmentalists" from 10 to 14 years old. Teenagers had been taught how to work safely with tools, talked about the toxicity of certain products, and also explained the importance of reusing materials, helping the environment and energy, and keep the neighborhood clean. To this end, IARCOS suggested to build baskets using wood pallets of culling, an activity in which young people participated actively.





• Other activities





In San Cayetano, what struck IARCOS most was the absence of tables in most homes. That is why people were not used to eating together as a family. With holiday season approaching IARCOS thought it was high time to solve this problem. People had been given material to build table themselves using their own creativity.

Additionally, IARCOS worked with Employement Srevices of La Matanza to help people accessing jobs. As a result, 15 got one.