Participants baking pastries in the workshop. - Photo: Marisol Rojas
Seventeen women came together at the Columban Mission Centre in Lima to attend a series of ten workshops on making pastries. Their hope was to equip themselves to start a small business at home, which would enable them to provide additional financial support for their families.
Among the seventeen women were several migrants from Ecuador, while others had arrived from Venezuela. The rest were Peruvians who had travelled from remote towns or villages to the capital city in search of a better life for themselves and their families. One Peruvian, who had spent eight years in Mexico, now felt like a foreigner back in her home country.
Almost all of them felt overwhelmed by the frantic pace of city life. Though they were surrounded by over eleven million people, they felt isolated and lonely without the support of their extended family, neighbours and friends.
Since more than one-quarter of the people of Lima live in poverty, it is a major challenge for new arrivals to find suitable accommodation and regular employment. Besides, many of those seventeen women had a low level of formal education or were unable to take on certain kinds of jobs due to family commitments.
Mrs Marisol Rojas, the Coordinator of the Columban Mission Centre, explained the vision, “The pastry-making workshops were intended not just to enable those seventeen women to support their families, but also to grow as persons in their new surroundings.”
Participants display their pastries produced from the workshop.. - Photo: Marisol Rojas
Elaborating, she went on, “The sessions, which took place twice a week, were led by Elena, an experienced confectioner, so the participants learned the craft of pastry making and explored their own creativity by experimenting with new recipes. At the same time, they grew in trust and friendship with one another. Over the course of ten weeks, they gradually found the courage to talk with one another about their personal struggles in this huge city, developed the ability to laugh about their mistakes around the oven and discovered the confidence to share their dreams for themselves and their families. Moreover, as they listened to one another, they affirmed each other’s courage and resilience. And the gratitude they felt for the ongoing nurturing of their skills and spirits frequently found expression in their spontaneous prayers at the beginning of each session.”
Reflecting on his experience of supporting Mrs Marisol Rojas and accompanying another group of women who had participated in a similar workshop series at the Columban Mission Centre some months previously, Fr Dylan Tabaco, a Columban missionary from the Philippines, said, “Creating and baking, learning and relating together enabled the women from various backgrounds to understand and respect each other. Since all of them had experienced the prejudice and pain of being an outsider, they understood the importance of stretching one’s mind and heart in order to go beyond superficial perceptions and come to know one another at a deeper level. The pastry-making workshops provided them with opportunities to make new friends, gave them confidence and skills to explore new ways to support their families and deepened their faith in God who accompanies them through all the ups and downs of life.” While none of the women who have participated in the pastry-making workshops envisage their future as “life on a platter”, all of them have discovered how a platter of delicious pastries can nurture not only their taste buds but their spirits and dreams.
Columban Fr Tim Mulroy lives and works in Britain.
Listen to "Life on a platter"
Related links
- Read more from The Far East - March/April 2026
