Fundación Arte y Culturas Bolivianas – Proyecto Hormigón Armado

The Fundación Arte y Culturas Bolivianas (FACB) was created in 2005 as a family - based foundation to promote art and cultural activities and heritage through the management of cultural projects and spaces. At the same time, the Hormigón Armado Newspaper was born within the foundation, also in November 2005, as a cultural – social initiative (the Newspaper solely) created to give additional economic sustain to a group of shoe shiner children and young adults who work in the streets of La Paz, a most vulnerable group, particularly at that time. Thus, this first initiative was included as a project of the FACB and began growing through other similar initiatives in creative economy and socio productive entrepreneurships such as the Hormigón Tours (alternative city tour guided by shoe shiners – started 2010) or a cookie production unit that began functioning in 2014. This last example also meant that the initial group of male shoe shiners also changed and grew and more women began to be part of these initiatives, as well as other groups of street workers such as candy sellers and window shield wipers. Also, this change in the target group changed the perspective of work into working with more complete family groups. As the Hormigón Armado changed from an initiative (the Newspaper) into a project with other programs for access to economic rights, complementary programs in direct social aid such as school support and scholarships or support for health, social and legal assessment begun to be implemented as part of the Hormigón Armado Project. The Hormigón Armado Project is the main activity of FACB, although other cultural activities are also sporadically planned or have FACB participation. The main purpose of the Hormigón Armado Project is to create opportunities of access to economic, social and cultural rights to groups of persons and families in vulnerable situation.