Clinica Venamher interview and Soundslides

We spoke to Raul Salas, clinic administrator at Clinica Venamher the other day for our Soundslides to go with our first story.

We used the Canon HV-20 video camera to interview him, though we only are going to use his audio. This was an interesting experiment but I think we ended up with really good quality audio because the external microphone on the camera is probably better quality than the old Edirol R-1.

I also shot some photos with the Canon 10-D and a 17-35mm lens as Salas showed us around the clinic. It’s a small family-style clinic that runs on donations from people like Ernesto Ackerman, whom we recently interviewed as well. The “donated by” tags on a bunch of the equipment made for some interesting photos.

Hopefully the Soundslides will capture the clinic’s efforts to help out those Venezuelans and others who are struggling to make ends meet as newcomers to this country. It should be a good tie-in to Goal 1 – Eradicating Poverty.

Interviewing non-profit community figure

We recently interviewed Ernesto Ackerman, who is the president of the non-profit Independent Venezuelan-American Citizens and is involved in “Clinico Venamher,” a low-cost donor-driven medical clinic in Doral.

He was a really good source to speak about the Venezuelan community in Miami and he gave us some interesting opinions, comparing Venezuelans today to Cubans in 1959 going through the Castro revolution.

We shot a couple photos but since we were interviewing him at his business, Hillusa, a medical equipment supplier, it wasn’t a great visual backdrop.

We taped the interview but mostly for transcription purposes.

Keep an eye out for our Q&A with him coming soon.

He also pointed us to some other good sources that we’ll likely tap into in the near future.

Tracking down the Venezuelan consul general

We went to the Venezuelan consulate the other day to speak with a representative about some official figures on Venezuelans in Miami.

Unfortunately, the consul general is the only one authorized to give these statistics and he’s in Venezuela until March 1.

But the consulate itself seems worth mentioning. It’s located downtown on Brickell on the third floor of a tall office building. There is a metal detector and x-ray scanner before you can walk in and take a number to wait for one of about ten walk-up booths that look like ticket windows. You have to leave everything electronic outside, including cell phones, which would have been nice to know ahead of time.

The waiting area consists of several rows of seats with TVs on the wall showing Venezuelan tourism videos. An automated voice calls out numbers and tells their holders which window to go to.

It isn’t the crazy picture of screaming babies and screaming mothers that I had envisioned, but it’s still pretty busy.

The funny thing to me was that the Dominican consulate is located across the street, but in what looks more like a small Latin house from the 1950s. It looks like it was the first thing built on Brickell and all these nice modern buildings just built around it.

Story ideas

Several ideas for stories on the Venezuelan community have been floating around the empty spaces in my head so I thought I’d write them here so I don’t forget.

One of the ideas I’ve been looking into is the fact that Venezuelans seem to be very proud of their fellow Venezuelans in professional sports, particularly Major League Baseball and pro soccer. Maybe this is because these players have “made it” in the community’s eyes, have accomplished the American dream. Or maybe it’s that they are representing their country on a grand scale. I’d be interested to get some Venezuelans’ perspectives on these athletes.

Also, as compared to other immigrant communities, Venezuelans in Miami seem to be much more scattered. Unlike for Haitians or Cubans, there is no “Little Caracas.” Now, of course there are more Cubans and Haitians in Miami. But I wonder why Venezuelans seem to be in every area of Miami but outside of a decent-sized grouping in Doral there isn’t really an area with a heavy Venezuelan population.

Anyway, these are just rough ideas and I would have to develop either into a more complete thought and find people to interview.

Interviewing a Venezuelan soccer player in Pembroke Pines

We recently interviewed Melissa Guerra, a Venezuelan native who lives in Pembroke Pines and coaches girls’ soccer.

She came to Miami from Caracas when she was seven. She always liked watching her brother play soccer but was never allowed to play herself as in Venezuelan culture sports are considered exclusively for males.

Once her parents gave in and let her play sports, she never looked back. She quickly became too good for her soccer league and moved up to better leagues.

Eventually Guerra walked on her college soccer team and earned a scholarship with her hard work and play.

Now she passes along her knowledge and passion for the game to young women in the hopes that they won’t have to struggle to be able to play as she did.

My partner and I recorded her interview on an Edirol digital audio recorder and took some photos of the interview and of some of her old pictures from Venezuela and throughout her soccer career.

The audio slideshow will be done soon and up so you all can see it.

We may turn the interview materials into a longer feature because her story highlights the struggles women can have in Venezuela to gain equality with their male counterparts.

UN Millennium Development Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability

The United Nations has come up with eight goals called the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that aim to “meet the needs of the world’s poorest” and encourage a standard of equality within nations. Accomplishing these goals will require global cooperation and effort.

In this blog I will be discussing several of the MDGs and how Miami’s Venezuelan community has embraced and relates to these goals.

First I want to highlight one of the MDGs and explain it briefly.

Goal 7 aims to “Ensure Environmental Sustainability.” It includes four targets to accomplish that goal. First, nations must integrate sustainable development principles into their policies and contain greenhouse emissions and limit ozone-depleting substances. We also must significantly reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010, requiring us to regulate land and marine area conseravation, slow deforestation and ensure fisheries are sustainable in order to reduce the number of species threatened with extinction. The third target is to cut in half by 2015 the number of people living without sustainable access to drinking water and basic sanitation. Currently around 1 billion people worldwide live without such necessities. Finally, the UN aims to achieve by 2020 significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers through “simple, low-cost interventions.”

As you can see, several of these targets’ deadlines are quickly approaching with some achieving more progress than others. But these are global problems and must be met by not just the affected nations. Where applicable, achieving this MDG will require funding and implementation by all member nations of the UN, not just those who have significant water problems (because we all will) or host many slum dwellers, for example.

It will be interesting to find out how Miami’s Venezuelans have embraced these MDGs and talk to them about their home country’s progress in these areas.