You heard it on No Te Duermas
Economic. Carmen continued: “I ask for help in businesses.
Economic. On the radio program, we spoke with Carmen Budge, representative of the soup kitchen ‘El rinconcito de los niños’ in Virrey del Pino, who referred to the difficult current moment.
Tomás Modini
@ModiniTomas
At the beginning of the note on No Te Duermas, Carmen Budge commented on how the initiative was born: “We started this 7 years ago. I started giving free school support to the kids, they asked what we were going to eat because at home they only ate once a day and well then I prepared a snack. Then the mothers arrived and told us about the situation of being out of work. So we made a stew, we all ate and it started off.”
“Maternal love and need were things that drove me. Seeing kids who arrive barefoot, without a shirt is very sad but it is the reality in which we live. Unfortunately, some have it and others don’t. When we started there were 22, we are in Barrio San Javier kilometer 38,” she added.
She also stressed that “there are no luxuries here. The street is an improvement, the dining room doesn’t have ceramic tiles but sometimes you don’t need luxuries to be able to help” that “we put in a used counter, some mosquito nets and a tin roof.”
Economic difficulties
On the other hand, the interviewee narrated what happens to those who turn to the dining room: “People tell you what they are going through, the situations they live in, that they don’t have work. There are people who come with different disabilities, it is heartbreaking and very sad. The worst thing is to say that there is none because unfortunately, sometimes, we cannot give people what they asked for. There were people who got angry, there are others who continue to come. We cannot please everyone.”
“Today I am giving out food parcels on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and sometimes I make snacks too. I do it with my own money, with what I ask for in the shops and things that I buy out of my own pocket, like giblets and minced meat. Between 30 and 40 people come, that’s why I say that I’m not going to give up and I’m going to continue helping, but nowadays it’s hard for a family to survive, and even more so for a soup kitchen. Entire families of nine members come to look for food. They’re out of work, there are many out of work,” she explained.
Regarding the help they receive, she said that “in this last year, Social Development supplied us, some neighbors here on the block asked who also wanted to have feeders and unfortunately they couldn’t have them” and that “that was one of the problems we had, that the coordinator decided to close a milk donation. They told us that they couldn’t give them.”
“Apart from that, they sent us to bromatology where I signed a paper without reading it and that paper said “animals with diseases.” To which I say today that it’s a lie. I have dogs and cats, my neighbors do too, but the one that was sick wasn’t mine,” she added.
“You can’t say no to people”
In the final stretch, Carmen continued: “I ask for help in businesses, from my social plan that I get paid, I go, buy and cook. There are two mothers who help me and who collaborate with the flour and the yeast. We knead pizza, we were going to make videos with sauce and we are going to give them that with some cookies for the afternoon.”
“You can’t say no to people. I cried in the corners thousands of times but I can’t give up, because it’s something I feel in my soul. For me they are not strangers, they are like my family. I don’t play politics with this nor do I want to become famous. I want to help because I know what a need is,” she concluded.
For collaborations, she is Carmen Budge on her Facebook account and her phone number is 1127585896.
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