50% of the population in Costa Rica is under the age of 15. Thousands of these children live with daily hunger, unable to focus in school and fatigued from the lack of nutrition.
Marginalized rural and urban communities have critically poor standards of nutrition, health, living, employment and education. These communities have a significant number of female-headed households all of whom live in extreme poverty. Consequently, many families struggle to know where their next meal will come from. Malnutrition is a constant and very real threat to these women and children under six years old.
A network of child-focused soup kitchens and feeding centers has formed in the San Jose Valley, feeding 1,500 children a daily nutritious breakfast. This project is aimed at supporting the large numbers of children under the age of 12 who are often forced to leave school several days of the week in order to find employment in order that their family will be able to eat.
The program covers the primary needs of children, including healthy eating, encouraging the direct participation of families in the community. This serves both to transform the nutritional well being of the children and also raises awareness among families and communities as to the basic causes of malnutrition.
Not just the food…..
In addition to the food that children are being offered, these feeding centers make an effort to impact as many areas of the children’s lives as they are able to. Each feeding center has other programs that address the needs of their own communities and exist to provide better and more opportunities for the children. Some feeding centers focus on educational opportunities, family activities, counseling, adult literacy, vocational training, HIV/AIDS, education and awareness, spiritual development, health issues, family violence, and child prostitution prevention.
A breakthrough….
Through the initial commitment of Global Angels funding, the network was able to commit to helping 250 school aged children. With some creative networking and careful planning, they increased the number of children they were able to commit to ensuring that on each day of classes, 300 children received a healthy meal. The food distributor was so moved and impressed with the activities of the feeding program, that they have agreed to not only deliver the food for free but gave the entire network in San Jose opportunity to purchase food from them at a discounted cost. This means that ALL the projects will receive the long term benefits of being able to access high quality food at a fraction of the price. Imagine the difference this will make to the projects as they are now able to do more with what little money they have.
Step Up and Be An Angel, Feed a Child…
