The Universidad de los Andes (Merida) and the Universidad Central de Venezuela (Caracas) have been part of the HELEN network. To a large extent HELEN has been the seed which allowed the creation of a group of high energy physicists in Universidad de los Andes (ULA, Mérida). A Venezuelan physicist affiliated to IN2P3 (France) has been supervising students from ULA who will integrate the new group. A participation in the ATLAS experiment is under discussion.