Comedor Infantil Pasionista

On Tuesday, November 17th, we officially opened the Comedor Infantil Pasionista. The Comedor is our big project for the year that my five roommates and I are working on together. A Comedor is, more or less, a place that gives food. Infantil refers to children and Pasionista comes from the volunteer program that we are in, Passionist Volunteers International. The opening of a Comedor is a huge step for the PVI program and has become a large focus of our time here in Honduras. The idea to open a comedor was born out of the regular sighting of children digging through the dumpsters in the market.
We've been here for 3 months now and have been working for about 2 months preparing to open the Comedor. Preparation was extensive, as we are truly starting from scractch. Our hope in starting from the ground up is that the Comedor will be sustained by the people in this community and therefore, go on long after our year is done. We've put in a lot of "pulp time" (as we've come to call it) - visiting pulperias and mercados in our town to ask for donations of food, supplies, money and time. The bulk of our 2 months of preparation was building relationships in town to try to tap into every resource and get as many people as possible involved. And then there was a mountain of logistics to work out as well. Where will it be? How much will it cost? Who will we feed? Who will cook? How do we work towards solving this problem instead of just putting a band aid on it?
And so, on the day of opening, Comedor looked like this...
We are located in Nueva San Diego, the poorest neighborhood in Talanga, in a house that we are renting for roughly $30 a month. There are 12 kids in the program, all between the ages of 4 and 6. Everyday at least 2 of us go to the Comedor, along with 2 of the kids' moms. The moms are responsible for cooking the meal and cleaning up afterwards. We serve lunch Monday - Friday and the kids are there for about 2 or 3 hours. Right now, they spend that time coloring or playing outside but as all the kinks get worked out, kid time will become more structured with some hidden education amidst the fun. Once lunch is ready, the kids say grace together, wash their hands and sit on the floor to eat. Then they are given vitamins, a piece of fruit and head home.
Our dreams for the Comedor are big. We know that hunger is a problem that expands far beyond 12 kids and hope to include many more children in the program. We also know that hunger comes from a variety of other problems. Among our plans is to help educate and empower the mothers whose children come to Comedor. The things that we want to do are endless and there is no way to know how it will look in August when its time to leave but as of last Tuesday, the Comedor Infantil Pasionista is a real place, no longer just an idea.
The day we opened, we stood outside the Comedor and watched the kids cut the ribbon and parade inside. We had only found the location a few days before and the paint on the building was literally still drying from that morning. We had no tables or chairs and the meal was cooked with pots and pans borrowed from our kitchen. There were, and still are, questions about how this is going to work. But the fact is that it can work. It does work. As we approach the end of week 2, there are still problems to work out, but there are also already successes. 12 kids have been fed everyday. Moms have showed up and worked. All the kids have been seen by a doctor and given the medicines they need. Everyday we are receiving something, whether it's a bag of bananas or enough money to feed a child for a month. The amount of work that the Comedor takes is sometimes overwhelming, but as you can imagine from seeing the pictures of the kids, it is well worth it.