World Food Day!
World Food Day raises awareness about the challenges of food insecurity. Most of the world’s hungry live in developing countries. Chalice donors helped fill plates around the world by becoming lunch buddies.
Our Amanecer sponsor site is in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Chalice has partnered with the Amanecer Religious Foundation since 2004.
The Foundation supports three homes that provide care for youth at high social risk and for children and teens who cannot live with their families. These caring spaces welcome youth ages 8 to 18.
Many new arrivals at the shelter homes arrive underweight and, in some cases, malnourished. The site staff ran nutritional evaluations for the 96 shelter residents and 50 children from thirty external families.
In all, 45 children were considered underweight. The Amanecer site director, Sr Nora Prieto, understood the urgency of improving their health.
They created a three-year nutrition program to support 250 food insecure children, teens, and elders. The program provides residents with healthy and balanced diets.
The site staff will run workshops for children and parents on healthy eating and proper food handling. They will continue to check the participants’ nutrition status and progress. They will also have small farms where the produce from their vegetable gardens and small livestock/poultry barns supplements their diets.
They harvested onions, potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli, carrots, and radishes so far. They enjoyed the milk from their three cows and the eggs and meat from their 100 laying hens—a true farm-to-table experience.
The program includes products they cannot raise, such as beef, chicken meat, dairy and dry goods. They also needed kitchen supplies such as stainless-steel dishes, glasses, cooking utensils, industrial size pots (20-40 litre), and proper knives.
With the gift of this healthy meal program, our lunch buddies helped community members improve their diets, focus during class, and stay safer from illness.
Chalice is excited to serve more delicious, warm meals to our sponsor site families. Ladles and Love focuses on supporting the nutritional needs of our sponsor sites. To make a difference this World Food Day, become a lunch buddy!