BAG
February is the month of love. While we celebrate with our closed ones, we want to also give back to where we came from. We interviewed Alimenta Venezuela, an organization who we’ve been supporting through our Stepping Up Project, that provides Venezuelan children with daily meals in order to support their education. Read more and find out how you can spread the love this month!
Tell us a little about your organization and how you started.
Thank you, Andrea Gomez, for sharing this space to tell what we do. We are Alimenta Venezuela, the humanitarian aid program of our organization LatamFDF - Latam Freedom & Development Foundation.
We are three directors and co-founders who were brought together by the unique passion to leave a positive impact on what we do. Alimenta Venezuela began 4 years ago when we realized that even when living abroad, we wanted and could do a lot for Venezuela. We come from different backgrounds, but we were all looking to combine economic and social development with corporate focus. Our team came together in 2017, to implement programs that help develop citizens into Change Agents and create positive changes for society.
What is your organization’s mission?
We believe that the road to development begins with making a positive impact on each individual, that everyone deserves to fulfill their basic needs of food and health. To address the humanitarian emergency faced in Venezuela, Alimenta Venezuela brings light to the food crisis and child malnutrition.
Our program supports children between 0-12 years old with some degree of malnutrition, by providing each child with a guaranteed, balanced meal everyday. Additionally, if a child meets the age requirements for education, he/she is encouraged and required to enroll in school and participate in complementary activities and community kitchens. By doing so, we hope to make sure that, of the many reasons why children could not go to school, an empty stomach is not one of them.
Through our new training program called Amäi, which means “mother” in our native language Pemón, we’ve seen amazing health improvements in the children we support through making nourishing meals and providing parents with nutrition education.
What does the Stepping Up Project mean to you?
In 2021, our goal is to give even more. We are beginning with being able to supply more than one meal a day for our kids. But with the help of the extraordinary team at Andrea Gomez and its Stepping Up Project, we will also be able to provide shoes and backpacks to our children!
A pair of shoes is not just a piece of clothing - having shoes means that these children will be able to walk to community kitchens where they receive their daily meals and attend school; it means smiles on each of these childrens’ faces; it means that the future of our country has the ability to dream, with these little backpacks.
How can we help and support you?
You can support providing child nutrition through our recurring donor program: I Care www.latamfdf.org.
There are many ways to support Alimenta Venezuela - buying products from our collaborators, participating in fundraising activities, and being a voice to others about our mission to feed children suffering from malnutrition despite the intense humanitarian crisis in Venezuela. You can find out more through our Instagram: @alimentavenezuela, and see the faces we are able to feed with your support.