Feeding single mother families in Itapecerica da Serra, São Paulo
The global Covid-19 emergency has affected every person, every community and every nation, and many have been “hotspots” at one or another point in the long pandemic. As the USA moves beyond the darkest period, our attention is drawn to the global disaster.
In Brazil, the system is overwhelmed and near the breaking point. It is already a humanitarian disaster as the now dominant Brazil P1 variant, even more virulent and deadly, is now spreading across South America. In Itapecerica da Serra, a municipality of 170,000 people on the fringes of São Paulo, there are no more hospital beds, no oxygen tanks, and many deaths. With no vaccines anticipated this year as a path out of the health crisis, the municipality has been declared a disaster by the city government. The scale of the public health crisis overshadows almost all else, and seems intractable, but after a year of pandemic work and other restrictions, many already struggling families are facing homelessness and hunger.
Hearts that Feed is a local initiative created by Soraia Leal. It began two weeks ago as a local food drive, to address the urgent needs of a few single mother families, which became critically vulnerable in the latest devastating wave of Covid-19 over the past month. It built on her long experience and intimate knowledge of two target neighborhoods in the city: a low-income rural setting with many families displaced or in precarious living conditions, Jardin Renata, and a low-income urban area (favela), Jardim Analândia, where many families lack basic food and are in precarious living situation.
This urgent Pennywise campaign seeks support to continue and expand Hearts that Feed. It aims to help address one small piece of this omnibus social emergency: Single mother families from these two neighborhoods who are threatened with collapse. It will provide food and other essential needs for 50 families, averaging a mother and two children, for two. Fifty families in a city with 170,000 people and a metropolitan area of 20,000,000 is only a drop in the bucket, but it is a start, even if all we can do is get 50 families off the verge of collapse and through this brutal second wave.
In Brazil, the system is overwhelmed and near the breaking point. It is already a humanitarian disaster as the now dominant Brazil P1 variant, even more virulent and deadly, is now spreading across South America. In Itapecerica da Serra, a municipality of 170,000 people on the fringes of São Paulo, there are no more hospital beds, no oxygen tanks, and many deaths. With no vaccines anticipated this year as a path out of the health crisis, the municipality has been declared a disaster by the city government. The scale of the public health crisis overshadows almost all else, and seems intractable, but after a year of pandemic work and other restrictions, many already struggling families are facing homelessness and hunger.
Hearts that Feed is a local initiative created by Soraia Leal. It began two weeks ago as a local food drive, to address the urgent needs of a few single mother families, which became critically vulnerable in the latest devastating wave of Covid-19 over the past month. It built on her long experience and intimate knowledge of two target neighborhoods in the city: a low-income rural setting with many families displaced or in precarious living conditions, Jardin Renata, and a low-income urban area (favela), Jardim Analândia, where many families lack basic food and are in precarious living situation.
This urgent Pennywise campaign seeks support to continue and expand Hearts that Feed. It aims to help address one small piece of this omnibus social emergency: Single mother families from these two neighborhoods who are threatened with collapse. It will provide food and other essential needs for 50 families, averaging a mother and two children, for two. Fifty families in a city with 170,000 people and a metropolitan area of 20,000,000 is only a drop in the bucket, but it is a start, even if all we can do is get 50 families off the verge of collapse and through this brutal second wave.
