Grassroots Humanitarian Aid for an Overlooked Crisis: A Profile of On The Ground International
Maria and her husband Reiner were both born in Venezuela. They worked in Maracaibo’s thriving tourism industry for many years, before finally saving up the funds to follow their real dream – owning a restaurant. “Venezuela is a marvellous place, it’s a marvellous country,” Maria explains. “It used to be very… How can I say it? Prosperous.”
Maria and Reiner’s restaurant flourished as they raised their three young boys. Their life was simpler back then. Their family was safe, happy and healthy. They never imagined that just a few short years later, they would be forced to flee the country they love, and everything they had built there. Maria still remembers the night they decided to leave. “Just go,” she said to her husband, “if you don’t do it, I think we’re going to starve.”
Reiner came to Colombia before the rest of his family, hoping to chart a path for Maria and their kids. He began selling coffees in the plaza of Pamplona – a small town close to the Venezuelan border. On a good day, he would make two US dollars.
For four long months, Maria cared for their children in Venezuela. “It was hard to find food for them,” she recalls, pushing through tears. “I wasn’t earning any money from the restaurant… Some days I didn’t have food for them to take to school.”
One morning, a woman named Bethani offered Reiner some work as a chef for On The Ground International – a grassroots not-for-profit organisation in Pamplona, working on the front lines of the Venezuelan refugee crisis. Over time, Reiner was able to save up enough money to send for his family.
Almost four years later, I found myself sitting in Maria and Reiner’s new restaurant, just two blocks from the plaza where Reiner had been selling coffees. Their three boys were at school as I spoke with the couple about their arduous journey. Watching their dog Laika bounce playfully around the cobblestone courtyard, I couldn’t help but feel that Maria and Reiner’s life had finally returned to its original equilibrium, after an unimaginably difficult period.
But while Maria and Reiner’s story is undeniably heartbreaking, it is by no means unique. The Venezuelan refugee crisis is one of the most pressing humanitarian emergencies on the planet, and it’s also one of the most overlooked. Since 2014, over 7.1 million Venezuelans – more than a fifth of the population – have left the country, fleeing starvation, disease and violence. Each has their own version of Maria and Reiner’s story, although most are still searching for their happy ending.
I travelled to Pamplona in order to spend a week with On The Ground International – the same organisation that gave Reiner his break – and to document the incredible work that they’re doing. But before we get to that, it’s important to understand the story behind the Venezuelan crisis, and why this organisation exists in the first place.
Background to the Venezuelan Refugee Crisis
Venezuela is the most oil-rich country on the planet – home to around 18% of the world’s total reserves – and just a few decades ago, they were the wealthiest country in all of South America.
In the mid-1970s, the country nationalised their oil production, with the goal of using their vast reserves to benefit the many, not the few. Throughout the 80s and 90s, and into the 21st century, Venezuela was the envy of the rest of the continent. Indeed, for many refugees fleeing other conflicts in the region at that time, Venezuela was their desired destination.
However, the seeds for the country’s demise began to be sewn in 1999 with the election of Hugo Chávez, whose presidential reign spanned more than a decade. The charismatic leader still divides opinions today. To some, he was an idealistic socialist, who always had the nation’s best interests at heart. To others, he was a power-hungry autocrat, who would do whatever it took to maintain his power.
In reality, he may well have been both.
In 2003, he fired 19,000 employees from the state’s oil company in response to a protest, and replaced them with people loyal to his government. Those ousted included several top officials, who had been working in the industry for decades.
The following year, oil prices skyrocketed, and Chávez spent billions on social welfare programs that benefited Venezuela’s poor. Poverty rates were cut in half, and the nation’s healthcare and education systems improved dramatically.
In 2007, Chávez expelled a number of international oil companies after they refused to renegotiate contracts that would have given Venezuela majority-control of their oil projects. Chávez wanted more money going to his people, and less to already-wealthy oil executives, but his actions would prove costly. In his efforts to maintain control – both of his government and the country’s oil – Venezuela lost much of its technical expertise and infrastructure for producing oil.
Still, if oil prices had remained high, Chávez might well have gotten away with it.
Unfortunately for Venezuela, oil prices plummeted in 2014, and so did the social programs that depended on them. Worse still, Chávez had died the previous year, and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, turned out to have all of Chávez’s dictatorial tendencies, but without any of the egalitarian undertones.
Inflation skyrocketed in Venezuela in the years that followed, and the country’s economy dropped 35% – more than the US during the Great Depression. Their currency became essentially worthless, and the majority of people were no longer able to afford food or medicine.
As disease, starvation and crime rates rose dramatically, Maduro consolidated his stranglehold on the nation. In 2017, he disavowed the National Assembly – removing the last of Venezuela’s institutional checks on his power. In the years that followed, he staunchly opposed any foreign intervention – including humanitarian aid – and refused to acknowledge that his country was in crisis. Consequently, 77% of the population are now living on less than two dollars a day.
Since 2014, more than 7.1 million people have fled Venezuela, in what has been dubbed the most underfunded refugee crisis in modern history. The majority have crossed into neighbouring Colombia on foot, with little more than a backpack of belongings, and a few dollars if they’re lucky.
They’re referred to as caminantes, or walkers, and they represent some of the most vulnerable people on the planet.
Bethani King, founder and director of On The Ground International, was moved by their stories, and booked a one-way ticket to the region in 2019. Three years on, I sat down with her to hear her story.
Bethani King
Long before she arrived at the Venezuelan border, Bethani recalls being a somewhat naïve music teacher in her home in Portland, Oregon. “My first class was 7:15 in the morning, and I taught piano lessons between classes, and then I coached basketball until 8pm,” she explains. “I started hearing people saying things about Syria, or ISIS, and I just kind of ignored it. I had a very busy life.” One day, she decided to learn more about what was happening in the Middle East, and was shocked at what she discovered. “I was like, it can’t be this bad. This can’t be real… If it were really this bad, we’d all be doing something about it, right?”
Many of us experience such emotions when we read about atrocities occurring around the world. All too often, however, outrage turns to helplessness, and helplessness turns to apathy – but not for Bethani. The following summer, she was on a plane to Lebanon, driven by little more than a gut feeling that this was something she needed to do. With the sounds of shelling just a few kilometres away, Bethani spent her vacation period volunteering with local organisations on the Syrian border.
The following year, she left her job as a teacher and returned to the region, this time on the Greek island of Lesbos, working with Syrian refugees who had made it across the Mediterranean. Both there and in Lebanon, she had struggled to tee up volunteering opportunities before she left. “What I learned from that,” she explains, “is that often there are organisations on the ground doing good work, but often they’re small, they’ve just started, they’re local, they’re grassroots – they don’t have an internet presence yet.”
After some months working in Greece, Bethani found herself increasingly drawn to the crisis in Venezuela. “It was almost like the world didn’t really know or care about what was happening there,” she says. When she couldn’t find any organisations to volunteer with in advance, her experiences in Lebanon and Lesbos had taught her what to do. “I bought a one-way ticket to Cúcuta, which is on the border with Venezuela, with the idea that I’m just going to go see for myself,” she recalls. She’d planned on staying for around three months – that was three years ago.
Bethani went to the region with no intention of starting an organisation, and spent the initial period volunteering at various shelters. “The original reason I founded the organisation was honestly just to accept donations in a more transparent way,” she explains. “People started sending me money, just via my Instagram or personal texts, and I felt funny having that all go through my own bank account.” Shortly after this, people started to ask if they could volunteer with her. She tentatively accepted, unsure what to do with the extra support. “It really was just trial and error, and we learned quickly which things were helping,” she recalls. “Eventually, through word of mouth and our website, we started getting more and more volunteers.”
Today, On The Ground International is a registered not-for-profit, and has between ten and fifteen volunteers at any one time. Located in Pamplona, around 75 kilometres from Colombia’s border with Venezuela, they run a wide variety of projects that assist Venezuelan refugees and the local community more generally.
On The Ground International
An average day for a volunteer at On The Ground International begins at 6am. They’ll head to Vanessa’s shelter – a small residence near the centre of Pamplona that provides food and accommodation for the caminantes passing through. The volunteers mop, wash dishes and change the mattresses from the night before, and shifts continue at Vanessa’s throughout the day. In the evenings, volunteers assist with preparing food, and also spend time playing games with the children, in order to give their parents a break after a long day of walking.
I visited Vanessa’s shelter on my first night in Pamplona, and one of the first people I met was Milagros.
Milagros is eleven years old. Although, like many children who grew up in Venezuela, she looks younger due to malnutrition in her formative years. Her parents fled to Pamplona and have been volunteering at Vanessa’s shelter until it is safe to return home.
As soon as she saw me, Milagros took an immediate shine to my camera, and asked if she could borrow it. She didn’t put it down for the rest of the evening, running around the house taking photos of anyone who would strike a pose for her – and when she ran out of subjects, she turned the camera on herself.
The following day, I was sorting my photos and browsing through the hundreds of shots that this girl had taken, when I came across the image above. It’s a self-portrait that Milagros took, and I am absolutely blown away by the quality of the photo. The framing is captivating, the lighting is great, and the emotion in her expression is just astounding.
It was quite the introduction to Pamplona to have my camera stolen by an eleven-year-old Venezuelan refugee, who turned out to be a better photographer than I am.
For the volunteers not working at Vanessa’s shelter, some are assigned the Mobile Aid shift. Their mornings begin with the preparation of hundreds of sandwiches, boiled eggs and other snacks. The refugees receive breakfast at their shelter in the morning, but the majority have no money to buy food or drinks before they arrive at the next shelter in the evening. Consequently, On The Ground International travel the route every day, delivering supplies to as many of the caminantes as they can find.
They also offer lifts to the most vulnerable of the Venezuelan refugees they encounter. On the day I joined them, we picked up a family of four about an hour’s walk out of Pamplona. The parents were accompanied by their two children, including a three-year-old girl, and they looked absolutely exhausted.
They told us they had fled Venezuela because the cost of a bag of rice had risen to three US dollars, which they were no longer able to afford. Fearing starvation for their children, they’d left their country on foot – hopeful of beginning a new life in Colombia. They’d already been forced to spend their small amount of savings on food and bribes, and like so many others, were now wholly reliant on the kindness of strangers in order to survive.
Exploitation of the caminantes is common. Robbery and extortion occur most often, and there are occasional instances of much more serious crimes, such as sexual assault and abduction. Further along the route, we encountered a Venezuelan couple walking barefoot. They informed us that they had recently been robbed of everything of value, including their shoes. Prepared for anything, Bethani immediately pulled two new pairs of shoes out of the car, and handed them to the caminantes.
The surroundings turned cold and foggy as we continued our journey up the mountain, away from Pamplona. Through the mist, a group of three caminantes slowly came into view. One of them was Javier – an intellectually disabled man that Bethani had encountered on these roads before.
It wasn’t clear exactly how he’d ended up in Colombia, but it seemed that he was struggling to find a place to settle, and didn’t know where to go. The other two men appeared to have taken Javier under their wing, walking with him towards their next destination.
We gave them all food and water, and continued driving.
As the day progressed, the encounter played on Bethani’s mind. She wanted to give Javier some stability, and had been impressed by the two men that were caring for him. She decided that on the way back, she would offer all three of the caminantes a position at one of On The Ground International’s shelters, where they would be given food, accommodation and a small stipend in exchange for work.
As we drove back towards Pamplona in the late afternoon, we came across Javier, standing alone in the rain, not far from where we had seen him earlier. The two men that were with him had managed to hitch a lift, and had left Javier behind. He was a long way from the next shelter, and wouldn’t have made it there by nightfall.
We learned that Javier’s family in Venezuela were no longer able to support him, and he had been wandering the roads for some time, bouncing from shelter to shelter with nowhere to go. When Bethani explained to him that she wanted him to work at one of their shelters, he was ecstatic, and gave us all a hug.
With humanitarian crises like the one occurring in Venezuela, it’s often easy to treat refugees as a group, forgetting that each one is a human being, with their own story, and their own needs. One of the things I was most impressed with in relation to On The Ground International’s work, was their ability to listen and adapt to situations pragmatically as they arose.
In addition to the support that On The Ground International provides directly to the caminantes as they make their journey, they also run a number of community projects targeted at integration for those refugees who’ve decided to begin a new life in Pamplona.
One such project is Cristo Rey, a children’s program set in a low-income area of the city. A number of the Venezuelan children here aren’t able to attend school yet, either because they don’t have the correct papers, or because they’re unable to afford the cost of a uniform. On The Ground International’s volunteers run classes throughout the day, teaching the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic, in order to ensure these kids don’t fall too far behind.
The centre is run by Liliana, a warm woman with a very generous heart. For the children who can attend school, many are unable to afford lunch, so Liliana spends every morning cooking up a feast for the dozens of children who burst through her doors around midday. They all take a seat at a long table, where they each receive a nutritious meal. Liliana told me that she once fed fifty children in a single day. It’s a chaotic environment, but certainly a lot of fun.
In the afternoons, Cristo Rey is open to everyone, providing a safe space for the children of the neighbourhood to play together – Venezuelans and Colombians alike.
On The Ground International also run two shelters of their own, each located a day’s walk either side of Pamplona.
One of these shelters is found in the middle of the Berlin Pass – a treacherous part of the route that reaches 4,000 metres above sea level, and where temperatures drop below freezing at night. Bethani opened this shelter in the small town of La Laguna in early 2020, and despite a number of caminantes having died from exposure in this region, she received major pushback from the local community. “It’s a very small farming community,” Bethani explains, “people who have lived there their entire lives, who’ve never travelled anywhere – very resistant to change, very xenophobic. They didn’t want anything to do with the Venezuelans.”
About two weeks after opening the shelter, Bethani had to organise a town meeting with the people of La Laguna. For three hours, she withstood a barrage of spiteful comments towards her work, and Venezuelans in general. “I had my Venezuelan staff actually leave the meeting because I was so upset about the things they were saying,” Bethani says. It was her toughest day since arriving in Colombia, and she left the meeting feeling sick and emotionally drained. A few hours later, however, her perspective began to shift.
“We got back to the shelter, and that afternoon, a farmer came by with two bags of potatoes – didn’t say anything – just left [them] on the porch for us,” Bethani recalls. Later that evening, some other members of the community came by the shelter. They sang songs, spoke with the caminantes for several hours, and the local pastor gave a rousing talk. But the defining moment was to come the following morning.
Bethani had made an agreement at the meeting that she would escort the Venezuelan refugees out of town each day when they left the shelter. That morning, she was walking with a young caminante – perhaps eight or nine years old. “It happened so fast that I almost missed it,” Bethani explains, “but another probably eight to ten-year-old Colombian boy – on his way to school – walked right past us. And as he passed the Venezuelan boy, he pulled a chocolate bar out of his pocket, and just stuck it in the hand of the Venezuelan kid.”
The young Colombian boy didn’t even look back, but Bethani remembers it as the moment she knew the shelter would succeed in the community. “To me it was like, okay, there are still good people here,” she recalls. “The people who came to this meeting are pretty ugly and pretty nasty – but they’re actually a minority… I think there are a lot of people in this community who are very supportive of what we’re doing. They’re just quieter.”
Two and a half years later, that shelter is still running in La Laguna, providing caminantes with warm meals and a safe place to rest on this hazardous section of their journey.
Venezuela Today
Venezuela’s refugees are some of the most desperate people on the planet, and yet they are disproportionately ignored compared to other crises around the world. For example, the United Nations has regional response plans in place for both Ukraine and Venezuela – each in the region of around US$1.8 billion. But as of October 2022, Ukraine’s had been 73% funded, while Venezuela’s was only at 17%.
“I think people will have more sympathy for a family who’s left because bombs are falling on them than a family who’s left because they’re starving,” Bethani says. “But honestly, I think the stories I’ve seen of Venezuelans are just as heartbreaking as the Ukrainian stories.”
And those stories coming from Venezuela show no sign of slowing down. “I’m right here on the front lines and I often don’t really know what’s going on in Venezuela, because there’s no good news coming out of the country,” Bethani explains. “But we’re here in October of 2022, and in the last two months, there’s been a big rush again, which to me means something has gotten worse in the country. All these people who have been able to survive somehow up until now have gotten to the breaking point.” Indeed, just two weeks before I arrived, one of On The Ground International’s shelters housed over five hundred caminantes in a four-day period.
Bethani often asks people why they’ve decided to leave now, and the response is almost always the same. “Everyone has their point,” she says, “and for many people it’s the death of someone in their family.” Starvation is all too common, and diseases like malaria, measles and tuberculosis – which had been almost entirely eradicated – have made dramatic resurgences. Moreover, while the crisis didn’t start as a violent one, increasing desperation has led to an extreme rise in crime. The government has stopped releasing statistics, but in 2018, Venezuela had one of the highest homicide rates on the planet – and that doesn’t include the extrajudicial killings perpetrated by state forces. UN Fact Finding Missions have repeatedly documented evidence of crimes against humanity by the Venezuelan government against its people – including arbitrary detentions, torture and executions.
All too often, Venezuela’s crisis is overlooked or dismissed due to its economic origins – the caminantes are portrayed as ‘migrants’ who are country-shopping, rather than refugees fleeing violence, starvation and disease. “I think often in the West we have this idea of, ‘they’re coming to our country, we live in the best country in the world, and they want a part of it’,” Bethani explains. “But that’s really not true. Most people will do anything they can to stay in their homes and they only leave when they are completely out of options.”
Conclusion
On The Ground International’s volunteers get one day off every week. The week I was there, they all decided to give up their Saturday in order to walk from Pamplona to the shelter in La Laguna – an average day for a Venezuelan refugee.
It was a thirty-four kilometre hike – all uphill – and I’ll be honest. It was pretty tough. We left before 7am and arrived around 5pm, with only a few short breaks for snacks along the way. The sun is sweltering for the first few hours, but once you get above 3,000 metres, the rain and fog settle in for the final stretch. I had several blisters by the day’s end.
For the caminantes, many have already done more than a week of walking before getting to this section, and are carrying everything they own on their backs.
Some have suffered through years of malnutrition in Venezuela before reaching breaking point.
Some are carrying children.
Most have no money to buy food or water along the way, relying on the breakfast from their shelter, or the deliveries of Mobile Aid by On The Ground International.
While the volunteers and I were able to go back to Pamplona and relax that evening, the caminantes would spend the night in La Laguna preparing for an even tougher day tomorrow, through the most dangerous part of the route.
On The Ground International is an incredible organisation, working tirelessly to help those most affected by the complex humanitarian emergency in Venezuela. From the shelters providing food and accommodation for the caminantes, to the community projects that assist them in making a fresh start, Bethani and her team of dedicated volunteers are making a significant impact in the lives of some of the world’s most vulnerable people.
Postscript
While On The Ground International’s work is an essential aspect of dealing with the Venezuelan refugee crisis, it’s ultimately treating its symptoms, not its cause. The solutions to the crisis are going to have to come from within the country itself.
Sitting in their restaurant in Pamplona, Maria and Reiner once again have everything that they wanted out of life. They run their own business, doing what they love, and their three boys are attending school – happy and healthy. And yet, they still long for their Venezuelan home that was so swiftly and unjustly taken from them. “I didn’t want to come. I wanted to stay home,” says Maria, “I still want to go home.”
Unfortunately, however, for as long as Nicolás Maduro maintains his authoritarian stronghold on the nation, the crisis shows little sign of ending. “I think the government has to go. That’s the principal thing,” Maria explains in a calm tone. “They have taken enough money from the country. They have taken enough lives. I think it’s enough. They have to go.”
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On The Ground International is the second organisation that I’ve featured as part of the Protect The World series. Thanks to our incredible supporters, they were also the first organisation I’ve been able to give some money to. It wasn’t a crazy amount, a little over US$100, but every cent will be going towards supporting Venezuelan refugees.
If you’d like to help me continue to tell the stories of more incredible NGOs, and contribute to their work, you can sign up to our Patreon at www.patreon.com/collecttheworld
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You can read or listen to the full transcripts of my conversation with Bethani via the links below:
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Don’t forget to check out the video I made about On The Ground International as well!