Candy dolls and dreams in the slums of Buenos Aires

By Anne Passow Sep 21, 2006, 3:13 GMT

Buenos Aires - In one of Buenos Aires' poorer and more squalid suburbs, women in a training centre are making candied dolls around a large table.

'We are making little princesses for a cake,' says Rosa Ester Gomez, a 50-year-old pastry chef who is training 19 students at the Sol Naciente (Rising Sun) centre.

Apart from the dolls, the curriculum lists cakes, pralines and chocolate truffles that the women will learn to make in the hope of securing a better future for themselves.

Sol Naciente is one of many private projects that are helping Argentina's poor to fight poverty without state assistance.

For the past eight years this organization has worked to alleviate the lot mainly of homeless and impoverished women in Bajo Flores, a poor part of the Argentine capital.

'We help women and girls who live on the street and who face problems with violence, alcoholism and drug addiction,' says Sandra Burgos.

'Many of them are prostitutes, earning money this way to keep themselves and their children,' she says. Burgos, deputy director of Sol Naciente, helped created the organization in 1998.

'Here we try to show them that they can take their lives in their own hands and that with willpower they can achieve a lot for themselves.'

Sol Naciente has much to offer. There is a candle workshop and a jam factory, courses on the guitar, computer and boxing.

The soup kitchen provides a warm midday meal to 700 children every day. The centre also offers a roof to young women who would otherwise be on the street with their children.

'The bakery is one of our first and most successful projects,' Burgos says. It produces more than 300 kilograms of bread and other baked products every day.

Some of this is used in the soup kitchen, while the rest is sold in Bajo Flores.

'Demand is higher than we ever dared hope,' Burgos says, explaining that people think highly of the Sol Naciente bakery because of the quality of its produce and the low prices.

It was not always easy. 'At the beginning our bread was rock hard,' Burgos says with a laugh. 'At the time we had no master baker.'

Today there are five bakers to teach the 19 women students the secrets of their craft. They are paid out of the proceeds of the bakery and the workshops.

'We do not make a profit. The sole aim is to keep ourselves going,' Burgos says.

The training course to become a baker lasts six months, and anyone can join. As a result not all the students under Gomez are young.

'We train women between 15 and 65. Our students have not enjoyed an easy life and still do not. The fact that they turn up here three times a week means that they really want to change their circumstances,' Burgos says.

Maria Leticia Orejero, 24, has to put in a lot of effort to participate in the training at Sol Naciente. In the mornings she works in a childcare centre, eating a quick lunch before rushing to the centre's bakery.

'Sometimes it's a real strain, but I really enjoy it here. Apart from the work, we have a lot of fun,' she says.

Gomez places emphasis on ensuring that her students enjoy themselves, as her own life has not been easy.

The death of her daughter and a spell in prison sapped her will to live. 'I had to do something to get out of this hole,' she says.

Apart from her work teaching at Sol Naciente she also runs a small cake shop. Many of her students have similar ambitions.

'Here with us the women learn that they can realize their dreams,' Burgos says. Her own dream when she opened the centre eight years ago was to 'help women who had suffered in their lives.'