For a year, the Red Cross will occupy the ground floor of the old Buenaventura Bonnet school. This space, in which Atelsam Mental Health is already housed, aims to become the largest social care center in the Canary Islands for third sector entities. For this, an agreement was signed three years ago with the Cabildo de Tenerife. The pandemic paralyzed the actions to add new entities as well as face their rehabilitation, which the City Council estimated in 2019 at just over one million euros. With this agreement to transfer spaces to the Red Cross, the aim is to resume the path begun before the pandemic and advance the objective of having a space in which third-sector entities can carry out their work in the capital.
“Our idea since the last mandate is to turn it into a great social and socio-health care center” the Councilor for Heritage, Juan José Martínez, tells DIARIO DE AVISOS. “We ceded part for an Atelsam Day Center -he continued- and now we are taking a further step with the Red Cross, which will install a food distribution device”.
Martínez acknowledges that so far they have not been able to get the Council’s Social and Socio-Health Care Institute (IASS) to divert any of its resources to this space, which, in the future, will also house the Social Care Unit of the Municipal Institute of Social Care ( IMAS).
European funds
Precisely the councilor for Social Care of Santa Cruz, Rosario González, delved into this great objective, telling DIARIO DE AVISOS that “the main building of the Buenaventura Bonnet has been projected to become a great center for the third sector, within the departure of European funds, but until the rehabilitation works of said building for that activity begin, what we are going to do is transfer the use to the Red Cross for the European program to help the most disadvantaged people”.
González details that the Red Cross will use the space to store food that comes from EU FEGA funds. “Once again, from the IMAS we are committed to the third sector, strengthening relations and improving collaboration in order to be able to provide a better service to our neighbors”, the councilor concluded.
According to the agreement signed with the Red Cross, the entity will share some areas with the Environmental Control and Management Service.
