Cuba celebrates 65th anniversary of first call for voluntary work

Cuba is celebrating this Saturday the 65th anniversary of the first call for voluntary work with days of work aimed at recovering the damage caused by two hurricanes that passed through the Caribbean nation.

On the initiative of the Cuban Workers' Union, these actions are dedicated to the historic leader of the Revolution, Fidel Castro, eight years after his physical disappearance (on November 25, 2016).

They also evoke the Argentine-Cuban guerrilla Ernesto Che Guevara, the main promoter of voluntary work as an initiative to contribute to economic tasks and forge a solidarity and altruistic conscience for the benefit of the community, society and the country.

The call is supported by the Union of Young Communists, which carries out activities throughout the country related to food production and recovery after the ravages of Oscar and Rafael in the east and west of the island, respectively.

This youth force collaborates with the rescue of organoponic farms, the construction maintenance of health centers, and the coffee harvest, the sugar harvest, sanitation and hygiene tasks, among other tasks.

On November 23, 1959, the first day of voluntary work was held in El Caney de las Mercedes, Bartolomé Masó municipality, Santiago de Cuba (east), headed by Commander Ernesto Che Guevara.

The idea arose to build a School City for 20 thousand children, children of peasants from the Sierra Maestra, which would become, according to Che, "a permanent symbol of the worker-peasant alliance where our revolutionary power is based."