Press Release:

Venezuela’s Social Missions:

Improving the Lives of Millions

In the decade since President Hugo Chávez was first elected, Venezuela has experienced a remarkable 54% decrease in the proportion of households living in extreme poverty.[i] This progress was made possible by more than 30 government-funded “social missions” that improve living standards through local community participation. The goals of the missions are: improving access to quality education, nutritious food, health services, clean drinking water, and other basic infrastructures and services. The missions also promote environmental sustainability, rural development, indigenous peoples’ rights, electoral reform, and socioeconomic transformation. Below you will find a detailed list of Venezuela’s social missions and some important accomplishments.

Key Accomplishments of the Bolivarian Social Missions
Mission	Results
Mission Robinson I	1.6 million Venezuelans became literate
Mission Robinson II	341,900 adults completed remedial primary schooling
Mission Ribas	450,500 adults completed remedial high school
Mission Mercal	11 million benefited from subsidized food markets
Mission Zamora	10.2 million acres redistributed for food production
Mission Barrio Adentro	Universal, comprehensive healthcare made available to all Venezuelans for the first time
Mission Miracle	1 million blind or visually impaired Latin Americans had their vision restored through free surgeries.
Mission Che Guevara	670,000 citizens received job training and business skills, forming 10,000 cooperative businesses

The Missions

Education

Mission Robinson I & II – Teaches literacy and remedial basic education.
Mission Ribas – Provides remedial high school courses.
Mission Sucre – Greatly expands the country’s higher education system to grant universal access to free university education.
Mission Alma Mater – Builds new universities and learning spaces to accommodate the increasing number of students seeking higher education.
Mission Ciencia – Creates university labs, offers graduate school scholarships and training in open source software.

Healthcare

Mission Barrio Adentro I, II & III – Provides universal healthcare through an expanding network of health clinics, diagnostic facilities, rehabilitation centers, and hospitals. Additionally, existing hospitals are modernized and refurbished.
Mission Barrio Adentro IV (Deportivo) – Promotes physical education and athletics in schools and communities.
Mission Niños y Niñas del Barrio – Provides rehabilitation and support to at-risk youth who suffer from homelessness, exploitation, and other vulnerable situations.
Mission Milagro – Provides free eye surgeries throughout Latin America to eradicate curable blindness.
Mission Dr. José Gregorio Hernández – Nationwide census and diagnosis of disabilities and genetic diseases.
Mission Sonrisa – Provides free comprehensive and rehabilitative dental care.

Culture

Mission Cultura – Promotes cultural identity and community integration.
Mission Música – Ensures access to music programs for all children.

Socioeconomic Transformation

Mission Che Guevara – Offers technical education in areas such as agriculture, construction, and tourism, facilitating the formation of cooperatives.
Mission Madres del Barrio – Helps reduce unintended pregnancies, lowers drug use among young people and provides aid in the form of monthly stipends to the poorest mothers.
Mission 13 de Abril – Improves residential infrastructure and promotes the communal economy through social property.
Mission Cristo – Aims to achieve zero poverty by 2021 through the effective synthesis and implementation of all the missions.

Environment

Mission Revolución Energética – Distributes energy-saving fluorescent bulbs nationwide.
Mission Piar – Develops environmentally-friendly mining policies and improves working conditions for miners.
Mission Árbol – Recovers forests by planting trees.

Food Security & Rural Development

Mission Mercal – Creates subsidized food markets in low-income neighborhoods.
Mission Zamora – Helps small-scale farmers and integrates them into Mission Mercal’s distribution and the national economy.
Mission Vuelta al Campo - Encourages poor and unemployed Venezuelans to learn farming and return to the countryside.
Mission Guaicaipuro – Restores communal land titles and defends the rights of indigenous communities.

Housing

Mission Hábitat – Constructs new affordable housing communities that include social services, schools, and health clinics.
Mission Villanueva – Replaces deteriorated homes with modern structures and builds new housing to meet increasing demand.

Education

Due to the high level of poverty prior to the Bolivarian Revolution, many Venezuelans lacked access to educational institutions and were unable to complete schooling. To correct this problem, the government launched a series of educational missions. These missions are free, provide stipends to students, and promote community involvement.

Mission Robinson I was launched nationwide in July 2003 with the goal of eradicating illiteracy in Venezuela. The program was designed for people over the age of 15 that were unable to read

write. The results have been tremendous. Under Mission Robinson I, 1.6 million Venezuelans have learned to read and write, increasing the country’s literacy rate to 96%.[ii] UNESCO special envoy María Luisa Jáuregui noted that "Venezuela is the first and only country to meet the commitments adopted by the region's governments in 2002 in Havana to drastically reduce illiteracy."[iii]

Mission Robinson II was instituted in order to provide elementary education for the newly-literate graduates of Mission Robinson I as well as other citizens who had not finished primary schooling. As of 2007, Mission Robinson II had graduated 341,900 students.[iv]

Mission Ribas educates adults who were unable to attend or complete high school. The remedial two-year program teaches Spanish, geography, history, mathematics, economics, foreign languages, and other electives. 450,500 students have graduated from this high school-level program as of 2007.[v]

Food Security and Rural Development

When President Chávez began his first term in office, he inherited a food security crisis that was decades in the making. In 1999, half the population lived in poverty, and access to affordable food was a major problem. Prior governments had failed to implement effective land reforms or address the “Dutch disease” phenomenon that caused food and other imports to be cheaper than comparable domestic products. The artificial disparity is due to the influx of foreign currencies used to pay for Venezuelan oil. This situation made Venezuela the only net importer of agricultural products in Latin America.[vi]

Through Mission Zamora, over 10.2 million acres of arable land have been redistributed to small and medium-sized farming cooperatives in an effort to revitalize the country’s agricultural economy and establish self-sufficiency in food production.[vii] The government also provides farmers with machinery, technical support, training, low-interest loans, and credits to ensure the success of the land reforms. Over the last ten years, corn production in Venezuela has more than doubled, and the country is on the path to achieving self-sufficiency in milk production within four years.[viii]

Mission Mercal was among the first of the social missions created. Its objective is to combat hunger and malnourishment through the development of a subsidized food distribution network. Small, medium, and large markets have been opened in poor and working class neighborhoods throughout the country. These markets sell high-quality produce, grains, meat, dairy, and other food items at discounts of up to 50%.[ix] The Mercal markets currently serve 11 million poor and middle class Venezuelans.[x] The success of Mission Mercal has contributed significantly to the dramatic drop in the rate of child malnourishment in Venezuela from its 1998 level of 21% to its current rate of 4%.[xi] Also, government-funded and community-run food pantries known as Casas de Alimentación feed close to a million of the neediest barrio residents everyday.[xii]

Healthcare

In 1998, there were only 1,628 primary care physicians in all of Venezuela. Through the Barrio Adentro missions, with the help of Cuban and newly-trained Venezuelan doctors, there are now over 30,000 doctors dispersed throughout Venezuela’s cities and towns.[xiii]

Mission Barrio Adentro was created in 2003 to provide free universal healthcare through a brand new network of over 1,600 health clinics, 600 diagnostic facilities, 600 rehabilitation centers, and 35 high tech medical centers. Barrio Adentro was launched in three stages: the first to deal with the lack of primary healthcare facilities, and then to improve advanced medical centers and hospitals. Barrio Adentro is overhauling the country’s hospital network by providing new, state-of-the-art medical equipment to 42 existing hospitals, upgrading and expanding these facilities, and building new hospitals in regions which lacked sufficient facilities. Barrio Adentro has also made universal preventative healthcare possible in Venezuela for the first time in the nation’s history. According to the Ministry of Health, 1,153 children’s lives were saved in 2007 due to the Barrio Adentro mission.[xiv] As of April 2008, a total of over 80,000 lives have been saved in 5 years.[xv]

Mission Milagro is a humanitarian mission financed by Venezuela and conducted with the help of Cuban eye doctors. Its goal is to eradicate curable blindness in Venezuela and throughout Latin America. The program offers complimentary eye treatments such as cataract surgeries for the visually impaired, and has already helped close to one million blind or visually impaired people, who otherwise could not afford treatment.[xvi]

Socioeconomic Transformation

Through Mission Che Guevara, participants are offered technical education in trades such as tourism, construction and agriculture, and learn how to run cooperative businesses. By August 2007, 670,000 people completed training and formed over 10,000 new cooperatives. Of those, 3,000 were in the agriculture sector, helping to increase the country’s food production.[xvii]