The mothers from the Chapel Homework Club preparing lunch time rations for the people of San Benito. Photo: Fr Ed O'Connell SSC
Warmi Huasi is the name of a small organization I set up with other Columbans and three professional women in 2003 to accompany families in poverty and especially children at risk. The name Warmi Huasi means Women’s House. One of the places where Warmi Huasi works is in San Benito, a township on the northern outskirts of Lima. The Warmi Huasi team accompany and empower the community there in their efforts to resolve their problems.
Over the years, one of the main problems faced by the women in San Benito was that while they worked their children were at risk. So Warmi Huasi, with the help of the community, set up four homework clubs so that the children would have a safe place to be in the afternoons and also to receive help with their homework. Warmi Huasi also has a reading club in their centre in San Benito on Saturday afternoons and has built a library and reading club in the local state primary and secondary schools.
These and many more activities have been underway for the past 15 years. In San Benito the children and adolescents, the community and the Warmi Huasi team, were all looking forward to a year full of life-giving activities during 2020. Then sadly the coronavirus arrived and all the families in San Benito and elsewhere in Peru were in lockdown. Today all children under 14 and the elderly over 65 years of age are still in lockdown. Younger adults are allowed out to work even though Peru still has over 7,000 new cases of COVID-19 every day and there is no sign of a levelling off.
All the Warmi Huasi team work from home and on weekdays make virtual contact with the families and discuss their situations with them. We have developed bio-security protocols so that we can take books from the reading clubs and distribute them to the children to read at home. We distribute short stories and invite the children to write their own stories. We have also given out leaflets on the measures to be taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Now we are facing the prospect of mass unemployment. 70% of the working population are in the informal sector, but many jobs have been lost and others are slow at starting up again. Many of the mothers were working as street sellers, cleaners or in domestic service but none of the San Benito mothers have been able to return so far.
However, in the midst of the fear of the virus and the worry of having no income to feed their families, some of the women have shown great resilience. They got together with their neighbours to start communal kitchens. By pooling their resources and organizing quotas, they can feed their families and at the same time cut down on costs.
The communal kitchenin Sector 3 of San Benito was built by the local community and a breakfast program has been functioning there for some years. Now they are also preparing lunchtime meals for 18 families with an average of five members per family, a total of 90 people being fed one meal daily. The mothers meet every afternoon to plan the next day. This kitchen receives some supplies of oil and food from the local municipality of Carabayllo. The mothers take it in turns to prepare and cook the food which is then collected by each family around midday and consumed at home.
The mothers working to prepare and distribute the meal from the communal kitchen in San Benito. Photo: Fr Ed O'Connell SSC
Los Cipreces is a small village of 65 families in a narrow gully to one side of the main township of San Benito. They have built community rooms and in one of them in normal times we have a homework club in the afternoons. These days the mothers there prepare lunchtime meals for 100 people.
In the last couple of weeks, the mothers of the Chapel Homework Club that normally would meet in one of the wooden huts constructed in the mission compound met to organize their communal kitchen, sometimes referred to as a common pot. They are now preparing on average 48 lunchtime rations for a total of 80 people every day. One meal is often shared between two people. So far we have not been able to help this Chapel Club with any financial support.
I think that we will try to donate at least 100 soles a week to each of the communal kitchens. That means a total of 1,200 soles ($475 AUD) a month. I imagine that the number of rations will increase once the communal kitchens get established and better known. We are concerned that the meals be healthy meals, especially for the children, so our donation will be focused on that concern. Some of the mothers who have work will be able to pay for their rations and others will be able to make a contribution. But some will be social cases, including elderly people as well as the children. In time the communal kitchens will be able to sell a number of meals to third parties who will be able to pay a little more to help with the overheads.
When I use the royal “we”, I have in mind all those in solidarity with these mothers - parishes in Lima, our Columban benefactors, friends and family have all helped me out in the past. This time it is not for the regular work with the children and adolescents which will virtually go on one way or another, but rather a more basic and urgent appeal to help these families have a more nutritious plate of food each day.
Columban Fr Ed O’Connell lives and works in Peru.
Listen to "San Benito: Community kitchens in times of COVID-19"
Related links
- Read more from The Far East, September 2020
