Aylesbury women prepare Christmas charity boxes for Venezuelan children

Iliana and Deyali prepare the boxes of clothes, toys and chocolate to send to children in Venezuela

Two Venezuelan women living in Aylesbury who recently held a Latina Party to raise funds for children living through the humanitarian crisis in their country of birth, have been working hard to prepare charity boxes from the proceeds.

Iliana Glaister, who has lived in the UK for 27 years, and her friend Deyali Araujo who has lived here for 12 years, organised the party, which included Venezuelan food and of course lots of salsa dancing.

The party took place on 9 November and The Bucks Herald was there to take the photos:

https://www.bucksherald.co.uk/news/people/venezuelan-charity-party-aylesbury-incredible-success-921206Iliana had previously explained to me why they had to buy clothes and toys to send in time for Christmas rather than just donating money.

Iliana said:

“As inflation is so high, to send money is ridiculous because everything is so expensive there, so we want to send clothes and toys in time for Christmas.”

Their target was to raise £1,600 which would have allowed 150kg of goods to be shipped to Venezuela. Although they fell marginally short of this, the charitable pair did gain enough to send 135kg, which they have been busy boxing up.

Writing to this paper, Iliana said:

“Thank you, thank you, thank you! May God multiply in your lives what’s been given with love to our charity.”

Despite holding the world's largest supply of crude oil, Venezuela has a refugee crisis on a par with Syria's, has 90% of the population living below the poverty line and has one the world's highest murder rates.