Nutritious Meals Help Children’s Growth.
Ana Belén and her husband, José, have four children and a baby on the way. They live in a small house in Santa María Chiquimula, Guatemala. Francisco, their 9-year-old son, says his neighborhood is, “a very happy place to live, but sometimes it’s also very hard to live here.” He is not wrong. In their community, malnutrition affects over half of the population mainly because people can’t afford to put food on the table.
Almost five years ago, when the COVID-19 pandemic started, José lost his job as a driver. This created serious challenges for the family. Even after the pandemic, things never went back to normal. Food prices went up and eggs became twice as expensive. Bad weather made things worse—strong rains damaged the crops, causing the prices of vegetables, including tomatoes, onions and corn to go up.
When Ana Belén went to the market, she could barely buy anything. The little money she had wasn’t enough to buy even the basics. “Sometimes I would cry because I didn’t have anything to give my children,” she recalls.
“I don’t want to see my children suffering from hunger. Thank God this project came along.”
—Ana Belén
Now the family participates in a Catholic Relief Services project that helps fight hunger in places where people don’t have enough food. Through the project, Ana Belén goes every other week to her children’s school to receive food such as corn, beans, rice, vegetable oil and eggs. “It made me happy when they started giving me eggs,” she says.
Her children really like eggs, especially hard-boiled with beans, so they make sure to remind their mom when it’s time to pick them up. Ana Belén’s family now eats nutritious meals every day. She also makes sure to take her children for monthly health check-ups, as part of the project.
Having enough nutritious food is very important to help children grow healthy and gives them the energy they need to learn and play, just like Francisco, who loves playing ball with his cousins and at school.
This Lent, try black bean soup, a meatless dish commonly eaten in Guatemala.
Support our global family through a lifechanging gift.
Your gifts to CRS Rice Bowl help families like Ana Belén’s overcome the challenges of hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity. Make a gift that will transform lives and help communities thrive.
