“Helping the poor with money must always be a temporary solution to solve emergencies. The great goal should always be to allow them a decent life through work.” In this forceful statement by Pope Francis in his encyclical Laudato Sí (2015) and reiterated in the Fratelli tutti (2020), the distancing of populist policies and a preference towards access to decent work for all is made clear.

For this to happen, it is important that several things come together: the desire to work on the part of people, entrepreneurs who invest to generate decent jobs, a state that guarantees and encourages a conducive environment, civil society organizations with multiple proposals, etc. But in addition to all these factors, it is important that there is a common vision to promote a culture of work, as well as to move away from the welfare that destroys people and puts them at the mercy of any kind of power.

In Venezuela we are experiencing a situation that can easily be classified as “urgent” as mentioned above, but it has lasted a long time. Therefore, helping the poorest is justified and in fact many initiatives are being carried out but they are insufficient for the dimension of the problem. However, just as two banks are necessary for a river bed to merge, offering opportunities for people to work and progress, or at least live by their own effort, cannot be ignored.

In the face of challenges of this magnitude, social entrepreneurs like myself know only one formula: start with passion and conviction within our square foot of influence, learn from reality always, and if it works, climb hand in hand together with others.

Let us never discount the impact of small, fragile things and apparently without public impact. An example of this is the cocoa flower: Something small, very beautiful and destined to disappear so that its fruit can be born: the cocoa maraca. The beauty of creation would reach this far, but we have the inheritance of generations of people who, thanks to their work, have managed to produce chocolate. From a very fragile flower, the smile of millions of people around the world can be achieved.

This same logic has inspired us in Trabajo y Persona, as documented in this newsletter in different ways. Small initiatives that translate into changed lives and that begin, little by little, to change others. Inspired by that conviction, we began a cultural project in 2018, which compiles songs from Venezuelan chores with a contemporary sound, to spread the desire to work and generate many smiles, just like chocolate. The promotional theme of this project is a composition by the master Aquiles Báez, and it is precisely called: Venezuela, Eres la flor del cacao

I encourage you to identify our starting point (our flower) and let’s get to work, because making the world smile is possible if we all put our grain, in this case, of cocoa.