Friday 14 Oct – Santa Teresa
We all know the dangers of alcohol to the young and it is of course right that we use every means necessary to protect juveniles from drink and educate them about the risks it can pose.
But if there are people who think that alcohol is an evil and can never be a force for good, they should take a look at what the rum distiller Santa Teresa is doing in Venezuela.
Venezuela has had a chequered history. It is both very wealthy because of its oil, and extremely poor, its cities containing gang-controlled barrios as violent as anywhere in the world. Until quite recently the homicide rate was 77 per 100,000 population. To put that in context, Iraq’s rate is somewhere around 27 per 100,000.
Santa Teresa has been making fine and distinctive Venezuelan rum for about 215 years, and its traditional tourist friendly distillery has survived all that the country’s politics, economics and culture has put in front of it. Most recently that has come in the form of the populist Socialism of Hugo Chavez, who has urged the country’s wealthier businesses to do more to help the country’s poorest.
Santa Teresa has always been a people-focused business but when one of the company’s security men was attacked by an armed gang and the perpetrators caught, the company management hit upon an amazing idea. They asked the police if they could give the three gang members involved a choice: come and work cutting crops for three months and get support, training and education, or face years in the country’s harsh prisons.
They chose to come and work for Santa Teresa, and asked whether the rest of their gang – about another 20 people – could join them. And so it was that Project Alcatraz was born.
Project Alcatraz is a three month intensive course of hard labour, education in responsibility and values, team and character building and leadership training. At the end of the three months participants who ‘graduate’ are given the choice of full time work or further education.
It has proved to be hugely successful and popular with the young gang members, offering them the chance to gain respect, to be treated fairly, and providing them with a genuine route out of the slums. Gangs are laying down their weapons, there are plans to expand the foundation and it may be introduced to prisons.
In the regions where it is operating crime has fallen by 40 per cent and homicides are down to about 23 per 100,000 and set to fall in to the teens.
And all thanks to a little rum producer called Santa Teresa.
There’s something else, too. As part of Alcatraz participants learn rugby, a sport not really known in Venezuela. There are now seven teams, often based around the old gangs, and a coach from London Harlequins even came over to help with the training. The sport looks set to grow further, and discussions have been held about sending an exhibition team from Venezuela to next year’s Hong Kong Sevens.
Impressive stuff. Now who says alcohol can’t be a force for good?
