WHEREAS, President Hugo Chavez, elected in a landslide in 1998, agreed with women’s demand to create a Women’s Development Bank that would fund grassroots women’s self-help projects as a way to tackle poverty among the poorest families and communities, and appointed Nora Castañeda, an economist committed to grassroots women, to lead it; and
WHEREAS, Ms. Castañeda has worked on women’s issues all her life – dealing not only with domestic violence, but with the economy and the distribution of income from grassroots women’s point of view; and
WHEREAS, Ms. Castañeda is of African and Indigenous descent like 80% of the Venezuelan population including President Chavez, and is committed to the eradication of poverty in which 80% of the population lives; and
WHEREAS, Ms. Castañeda is working to build not only a bank, but a new way of life for women, raising the status of women everywhere; and
WHEREAS, Ms. Castañeda was central to the 1999 constitutional process that won one of the most advanced constitutions in the world, for women and for Indigenous people, as well as for all working people and all those who face discrimination on grounds of sex, race, age, disability, political views or any other grounds; and
WHEREAS, Ms. Castañeda organized the daily picket of the Constituent Assembly which won Article 88 of the constitution providing that: “The State guarantees equality and equity between men and women in the exercise of their right to work. The State recognizes work at home as a productive economic activity that creates added value and produces social welfare and wealth. Housewives are entitled to Social Security in accordance with the law”; and
WHEREAS, Ms. Castañeda is a distinguished spokeswoman for grassroots women who led the movement that reversed the coup in 2002 and that reinstated the democratically elected government of President Chavez and its constitution, and who are the majority in the thousands of cooperatives and community organizations in the new Venezuela; now therefore
RESOLVED, That the City Council of Philadelphia hereby recognizes the significant contributions Ms. Nora Castañeda has made to ensure that the Venezuelan economy must be a caring economy, an economy at the service of human beings, based on cooperation and mutual support; and
FURTHER RESOLVED, That the City Council of Philadelphia recognizes the central role of Nora Castañeda, President of The Women’s Development Bank of Venezuela (Banmujer), in guaranteeing the rights of women and the poor in Venezuela, raising the status of women everywhere, including in Philadelphia, which is a model for a caring economy for Philadelphia and beyond.
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