Ilda Piedrabuena, a full-time symbol of solidarity in Río Tercero

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“Solidarity is a way of life, it is contagious. I don’t conceive of life passing by someone without giving them a hand. But you can never help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.”

This is the opinion of Ilda Piedrabuena (76), a benchmark for social work and volunteering in Río Tercero, with a long career in education in this city.

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He has been helping people full time for 23 years. She is a retired teacher and for more than two decades she has been an active participant in the NGO La Luciérnaga in Río Tercero (today Fundación Juntos a la Par). From that place, she collaborated for years in school support tasks, with the mission that children and adolescents from vulnerable families do not drop out of school: “Several of these boys are already in university or in tertiary careers,” she values. she.

She narrates that in this accompaniment in school tasks, the boys and girls also have “their house in the center, with rights, in a place where they are considered, where they have birthday celebrations, games and friends.” Ilda no longer teaches in school support, but she mutated her vocation into another project that she promoted for the same foundation.

Currently, she coordinates the Mothers Project, aimed at low-income women and whose purpose is to help them generate their own resources, through sewing and weaving artisan work. It is a kind of work cooperative, where a trade is learned and the resources obtained from the sale of what is produced in the institution’s workshops are distributed.

“You have to commit to time,” shoots Ilda, who even when she changes her car –her roadmates say– thinks about how much she can transport in it to support that project.

Those who know her define her as “a militant of solidarity.”

Third River. Ilda Piedrabuena, today (The Voice)

She remembers that she began more decisively “with this way of life” shortly before retiring, after a long career as a teacher, but also as a writer specializing in Language.

In addition to her active coordination of the Mothers Project, she visits almost daily the houses of families in poor sectors of the city and gets involved with each life story.

Ilda has four children and six grandchildren.

One hand, always

In dialogue with La Voz, he recalls that he once coordinated a group campaign and there were many businesses that also collaborated, to make bathrooms or one more room in a settlement next to the Ctalamochita River, known as Los Algarrobos. “The families built the walls, but they did not have money -quote- to buy the supplies”.

At the same time, he states that he often hears comments of all kinds about poverty: “But you have to put yourself in the other’s shoes, it’s easy to judge. One would have to spend 10 days living like a needy family does and wonder if the other had the same possibilities as one”, he underlines.

He says that “many times those who are lower down are attacked too much and it should be the opposite, because they fight it a lot, because they do not have the same access nor did they have the same opportunity as those who are higher up.”

Ilda, just in case and against any prejudice, mentions that we must not forget that “there are lazy people in all social classes.”

It is intoned and pronounced: “A middle-class housewife who does not work seems to be fine, but if she is poor, she is considered to be lazy who does not want to work.”

And he adds: “So much need in poor sectors mobilizes me and I always think about what can be done for that person, find a solution. You have to give them tools. Always try to make it advance by itself”. Much of this came from that idea, planted a decade ago, to create the Mothers Project within the Juntos a la Par Foundation.

She dodges flattery and insists that “one does not live alone or isolated and we all need others.”

maker of culture

Women also have a recognized participation in the local cultural sphere.

She was twice an official in the Culture area of ​​the Municipality of Río Tercero and wrote four books. Let’s use our language correctly; With mastery of our language; First cultural agenda of Río Tercero and By the fruits they will know us, are the titles of her books. Her educational specialty was always that of the correct use of the language: some of her books in this line were a reference at the provincial level on the subject.

Regarding official activities related to culture, he currently believes that “more decentralization is needed, everything is concentrated in the center and there is not equal access for all”.

“As little as one can give, it is a lot for those who are suffering from it. I am in very good health, I do not take any medication. This is not my merit, this is life, it is God, I have received it as a gift and that is how I have to give it ”, concludes Ilda, about his intense days, in which he continues to teach but from another place.

In 2015, she was a candidate for Cordobés of the Year, a selection of outstanding personalities from all areas that La Voz carries out annually.

Ilda Piedrabuena was born in 1947, in Laguna Larga. In 1964 she settled in Río Tercero. She has a degree in Letters. She taught Spanish, Literature and Latin for 36 years, at the primary, secondary, tertiary and university levels. She retired in 2003 when she was the director of a college for adults.