This program focuses on severely malnourished children, and provides them with medical care and food on an ongoing basis. We currently have 37 children in this program, and are providing whatever medicine, food, or baby formula they may need. We give them bi-monthly health checkups, to make sure they are gaining weight, and we give the parents large bags of groceries and child-care supplies every two weeks, doing whatever we can to keep the children healthy and their families stable. When necessary we provide them with medical tests, and arrange all they need for surgeries and other procedures.
Our teams regularly make huge pots of protein–rich soup, or macaroni & cheese with tuna, or vitamin-enriched oatmeal with peanut butter toast, and serve these meals either to groups of abandoned elderly people in hospital wards, or to homeless people on the street, or as a breakfast to school children who would otherwise have nothing to eat until lunch. Sometimes our teams make giant pots of soup, or arepas (pan-fried corncakes) stuffed with tuna or black beans, and distribute them to people in parks or on the street.
Through this program we are providing 2400 meals a month at a shelter for homeless teens, and 800 meals a week at a school for poor children. This program is named after Angels Answer, a food bank in Boston, Massachusetts, which is providing us with large amounts of food and other supplies for our work in Venezuela.
We hope to expand this program in the near future, and provide food for a school with 400 poor children. Your donation can make it happen!
Through this program we are providing women’s vitamins and nutritious food for pregnant women and new mothers. We also give personal hygiene kits, including menstrual pads, soap, shampoo, and deodorant, items which most Venezuelans can no longer afford. The photo shows our first purchase of vitamins for women.
In this program we visit children's hospitals and give one-time gifts of baby food, baby-care supplies, and personal hygiene products. Our teams take note of patients who require medicines that the hospital does not have, and then do their best to locate the medicines. We also give out packets of food that people can take and cook at home. Often our teams bring large pots of food into the hospitals, and provide a meal for everyone there, doctors and nurses included. This is an essential service, because hospitals in Venezuela cannot afford to properly feed their patients.
During the Christmas season we send in a large number of chocolates and inexpensive toys, wrap them in decorative bags, and distributed them to children along with special holiday meals, so that kids from poor families who would otherwise receive nothing during the holidays could receive a taste of Christmas joy. Poverty is not only lack of food and money, but also lack of love and joy, and we do our best to provide a taste of both, all year round.
We’ve successfully sent over 20 tons of food, baby formula, childcare supplies, hygiene products, and over-the-counter medicines from Miami to Venezuela by ship. The supplies are received by our volunteers in Caracas, distributed to our groups of volunteers in several Venezuelan cities, who then give those items to the poor.
This is a nutritional supplement used by Doctors Without Borders around the world, specially designed to combat severe malnutrition. It has worked miracles in turning malnourished children on the edge of death into smiling, chubby cherubs! We will be buying more soon.
We have also sent in over $5,000 worth of medicines that we bought in India -- and in India that buys a LOT of medicine. Among the medicines we've sent are strong antibiotics in suspension (for children), anti-parasitics, painkillers, anti-fungal creams, and asthma medicine, all of which are mostly unavailable in Venezuela.
To date we have brought 37 children with special health needs into our "Saving Lives" program, and are providing whatever medicine, food, or baby formula they may need. We give preference to children who come from very poor families. We have also provided 3 surgeries for children, including cancer surgery, and a pacemaker implant for an 11-year-old girl.
The hospitals we are working with are always in urgent need of diapers, especially for newborns. Most Venezuelan parents cannot afford diapers now, and often use plastic bags instead, which tend to create terrible cases of diaper rash. . We have found a diaper manufacturer in Miami who is giving us a fantastic price on bulk purchases of diapers and wet wipes, and we’ve also sent in over 500 tubes of diaper rash cream.
Our work wouldn't be possible without the help of several people who have worked tirelessly to find donations, and get them to us. One of them is Linda S. Lloyd of www.AngelsAnswerInc.com, who runs a food bank in the Boston area, and who has worked tirelessly to collect food, baby formula and medicines for us. Learn more about them here, and please do donate for their work!
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