Background: Neighbourhood and Community Action is a foundation created in 1978 by Christian lay persons led by Bishop Enrique Alvear.



Objectives: AVEC deals with the problems of the urban and rural poor from an evangelical point of view, working for, and with the full participation of, the people concerned.



Activities: Its four major lines of action are to provide technical, legal and organizational support to: organizations of the marginalized and the unemployed (half of the heads of families are without work); organizations of people in debt to water and power companies, and to landlords; housing committees and organizations of people without housing, seeking a solution to the crisis of homelessness; and popular pre-cooperative savings groups. At the end of 1983, eight of these savings groups, some 550 families, set up the "Cardinal Raul Silva Henriques Ltd" Open Housing Cooperative with the assistance of AVEC and the Fundacion Hogar de Cristo Viviendas. In October 1984 the Coopeartive gave out its first 103 housing subsidies.



Serial publications: Codo a Codo (monthly)



Government status: Non-Governmental



Organization Type(s): Religious Oriented



Countries that this organization works in: Chile



Issues this organization deals with: Community Development, Poverty