The Hunger

GUATEMALA CITY — Central America is having one of its worst droughts in decades, and experts warned Thursday that major farm losses and the deaths of hundreds of cattle in the region could leave hundreds of thousands of families without food.
The agricultural losses are largely in corn and beans, basic staples of the region’s diet, the United Nations’ World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization said in a joint statement.
“The impact of the prolonged heat wave is having on nutrition and food security in parts of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua is very worrisome,” the agencies said.
The food agencies said the situation needs to be addressed immediately or what is already a food crisis could worsen in the coming months.
In Guatemala, about 170,000 families lost almost all of their crops.
(BND.com press)

Jose’s family lost their father five years ago after a long struggle with tuberculosis. Jose is the only son in the family, and without brothers to plant and tend crops, the family soon fell into a food crisis. They were referred to Finding Freedom in 2011, and since then have been receiving a daily meal that is sometimes all they eat in 24 hours. Our cost for their food staples went up 30% in the last two years. We anticipate a rise in prices again soon, due to country wide crop failures of corn and beans. Our commitment to Jose’s family remains strong but our financial resources will feel the strain. As the only wage earners in the family, his teenage sisters spend their days weaving traditional crafts. This family is trying to help themselves but without the ability to enter a formal job market, which does not exist in their village, they are relegated to a life of extreme poverty, and with it, chronic hunger. 

Lucy, (Right) only receives $10 worth of food per month from our program. Her mother is given this food as an extra incentive to attend our weekly literacy program, so that in the future she can read and write. Ten dollars provides Lucy and her siblings with some bags of rice and pasta, which doesn’t answer the need for protein, but helps fill little stomachs. Lucy is too young to understand the lack of economic opportunity that affects her family. FFF has provided funding for a community garden that her mother can benefit from. This garden will not provide protein that is essential to developing pediatric brains and bodies, but it is a start. 

Sylvia is a mother of seven children (right) in the slums of Guatemala. Financial limitations keep us from feeding this family on a monthly basis, but we were able to deliver food to them this past January. Last week, Sylvia called to ask for another delivery. She is a proud and resourceful mother, and we know that when she asks, the need is acute. We sent her food, and will visit her in October to assess how she can help herself with food security for her family with a micro business grant from Finding Freedom. 

There are so few, if any, solid answers for how to effectively feed all of the hungry children in our program. Ideally we would teach their mother’s a skill so that they could work and raise money to take care of their children themselves. 
Five years after the inception of our program, we have not found a way to teach women who are illiterate how to run a business or perform product development. The few dollars some of them earn from doing traditional weavings don’t begin to cover their cost of living. All nonprofits face the same dilemma: how to offer a hand up instead of a hand out, because the “hand” may not always be attached to a financial arm. 
Meanwhile, we will keep fundraising and feeding, because hunger is not something any child should experience, no matter what country they live in. 

Adopt-A-Village Guatemala and Finding Freedom collaborate to feed 7 families in remote northern Guatemala. Antonio is one of the recipients of this partnership.