The carts of “cartoneros” or garbage pickers stand in front of a merchandise purchase warehouse in the La Paternal neighborhood in the city of Buenos Aires. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Apr 6 2023 (IPS)

It’s a Monday morning in April on Florida, a pedestrian street in the heart of the Argentine capital, and a small crowd gathers outside the window of an electronic appliance store to watch a violent scene on a TV screen. But it is not part of any movie or series.

The scene, broadcast live, is happening a few kilometers away, in a poor suburb of Buenos Aires: colleagues of a city bus driver who was murdered during a robbery throw stones and fists at the Minister of Security of the province of Buenos Aires, Sergio Berni, who had come to talk and offer the government’s condolences in front of the cameras.

No one seems surprised among the office employees watching the scene on TV, and several make no effort to hide a certain sense of satisfaction that other ordinary people have decided to take action against a representative of the political leadership, the target of widespread discontent, as reflected by the opinion polls.“There is growing social polarization in Argentina, with an increasingly weak middle class. Each crisis leaves another part of society outside the system.” -- Agustín Salvia

“This was bound to happen sometime, if the politicians earn a fortune for doing nothing and we work all day to earn a pittance… And on top of that you go out on the street and they kill you just to rob you,” comments one of the viewers, as the rest listen approvingly.

The scene reflects the climate of tension and the sense of being fed-up that is felt in large swathes of Argentine society, in the midst of a long, deep economic crisis, which in the last five years has constantly chipped away at the purchasing power of wages, due to inflation that occasionally stops growing for a couple of months, only to surge again with greater force.

If there was room for modest optimism in 2022, as the result of a recovery in economic activity after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems distant today, since the beginning of this year brought news that reflects the magnitude of the breakdown of the social fabric in this Southern Cone country.

On Mar. 31, the official poverty rate for the second half of 2022 was announced: 39.2 percent of the population, or 18.1 million people in this South American country of 46 million, according to the most up-to-date figures.

Since 2021 ended with a poverty rate of 37.3 percent, this means that in one year a million people were thrown into poverty, despite the fact that the economy, thanks to the rebound in post-pandemic activity, grew 4.9 percent, above the average for the region, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

But these data are already old and the figures for 2023 will be worse due to the acceleration of inflation, which is surprising even by the standards of Argentina, a country all too accustomed to this problem.

The price rise in February reached 6.6 percent, exceeding the 100 percent year-on-year rate (from March 2022 to February 2023) for the first time since 1991.

When you look a little closer, perhaps the worst aspect is that prices grew much more than the average, 9.8 percent, for food, the biggest expense for the lowest-income segments of society.

To this picture must be added an extreme drought that has affected the harvest of soybeans and other grains, which are the largest generator of foreign exchange in Argentina. The estimates of different public and private organizations on how much money the country will lose this year in exports range between 10 and 20 billion dollars.

This is one of the reasons why the World Bank, which had forecast two percent growth for the Argentine economy this year, revised its estimates at the beginning of April and concluded that there will be no economic growth in 2023.

Luis Ángel Gómez sits in the soup kitchen that he runs in the municipality of San Martín, one of the most densely populated areas in Greater Buenos Aires. For the past 10 years, he has been serving lunch and afternoon snacks to about 70 children, but lately he has also been helping their parents and grandparents. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Soup kitchens

About 15 kilometers from the center of Buenos Aires, in the Loyola neighborhood, the cold statistics on the economy translate into ramshackle homes separated by narrow alleyways, with piles of garbage at the corners and skinny dogs wandering among the children playing in the street.

In a truck trailer that carries advertising for a campaigning politician, a dentist extracts teeth free of charge for local residents, who have increasing problems accessing health services.

The neighborhood is in San Martín, one of the municipalities on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Eleven million people live in these working-class suburbs (almost a quarter of the country’s total population), where the poverty rate is 45 percent, higher than the national average.

“I have never before seen what is happening today. Before, only men went out to pick through the garbage (for recyclable materials to sell), because the idea was that the streets weren’t for women. But today the women also go out,” Luis Ángel Gómez, 58, born and raised in the neighborhood, who does building work and other odd jobs, told IPS.

Indeed, the carts of the “cartoneros” or garbage pickers, which used to be seen only in the most densely populated working-class neighborhoods of Buenos Aires after sunset, when the building managers take out the garbage, are now seen throughout the city and at all hours.

A market selling clothes at low prices in Parque Centenario, one of the best-known markets in Buenos Aires, located in Caballito, a traditional upper middle-class neighborhood of Buenos Aires. This type of street fair has mushroomed in Argentina in the face of persistent inflation that is destroying the purchasing power of wages. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Gómez has been running a soup kitchen in Loyola for 10 years, where he provides lunch three times a week and afternoon snacks twice a week to more than 70 children and adolescents. It is in a room with a tin roof, a couple of gas stoves and photos of smiling boys and girls as decoration.

“The municipality gives me some merchandise: 20 kilos of ground meat and two boxes of chicken per month. Besides that, I cook with donations,” said Gómez. “This box was given to me by the company that collects garbage in the municipality,” he added, pointing to cartons of long-life milk.

But the soup kitchen cannot meet all the needs of the local residents, said Gómez. “My concern was to give the kids a better future and I fed them until they were 14 or 15 years old. Today I also have to help their parents and grandparents.”

The carts of “cartoneros” or garbage pickers, which until a few years ago were only seen after sunset in the most densely populated low-income neighborhoods, today have become a common image in every part of Buenos Aires at all times of the day. One is seen here in the neighborhood of Flores. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The middle class on the slide

The crisis has picked up speed since 2018 and deepened with the pandemic, but Argentina is going through a period of stagnation, with low economic growth and very little formal private sector job creation for more than a decade.

A study recently presented by the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina (UCA) shows that since 2010 access to food, healthcare, employment and social security have steadily worsened, despite social assistance, affecting five million households out of a total of 12 million.

“There is growing social polarization in Argentina, with an increasingly weak middle class. Each crisis leaves another part of society outside the system,” sociologist Agustín Salvia, director of the UCA’s Social Observatory on Argentine Social Debt, which is considered a chief reference point in the country, told IPS.

Salvia explained that the improvement in economic activity after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic drove the creation of new jobs until the third quarter of last year, although poverty grew just the same because they were almost all precarious low-wage jobs.

“The post-pandemic recovery cycle is over. Since the last quarter of 2022 there has been no more job creation, which added to inflation will cause poverty to grow in 2023,” added Salvia.

The expert said structural or chronic poverty used to be 25 or 30 percent in Argentina, but has now held steady at 40 or 45 percent, with a deterioration marked by the stagnation of quality employment, which has pushed many formerly middle-class families into poverty.

Fortunata Palomino is an experienced community organizer from Carabayllo and general coordinator of the Network of Soup Kitchens of Metropolitan Lima, which includes 2,247 soup kitchens. She is critical of the neglect by the authorities and hopes that women will be trained, certified and incorporated into the labor market with respect for their rights. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, Jan 24 2022 (IPS)

It’s nine o’clock in the morning and Mauricia Rodríguez is already peeling garlic to season the day’s lunch at the Network of Organized Women of Villa Torreblanca, one of more than 2,400 solidarity-based soup kitchens that have emerged in the Peruvian capital in response to the worsening poverty caused by the partial or total halt of economic activities in the country due to COVID-19.

Up to Mar. 16, 2020 – when the government of then President Martin Vizcarra declared a state of national emergency in an attempt to curb the pandemic – Mauricia made a living selling snacks and meals at a school, while her husband drove a rented motorcycle cab, with which he provided local transportation services. But from one day to the next, they were left without their livelihood.

They were not alone. In this Andean country of 33 million people with solid macroeconomic fundamentals, the pandemic exposed structural flaws that cause deep inequality gaps. For example, seven out of 10 workers were working in the informal sector as of 2019, lacking pensions, health insurance and other labor rights, and with no possibility of saving money, like Mauricia and her husband.

As a result of the health emergency measures and the pandemic more than six million people became unemployed in 2020, most of them in the informal sector in the areas of commerce and services, where women play a predominant role. In Latin America, 34 million jobs were lost that year, according to the International Labor Organization.

In addition, according to a report by the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI), poverty had climbed 10 percentage points to 30 percent, pushing another 3.33 million people into a precarious situation, who could no longer afford the basic basket of goods, estimated at 360 soles (92 dollars) a month.

Families in impoverished neighborhoods in the capital were among the hardest hit.

“The already existing poverty was aggravated by the pandemic. We saw people getting desperate, they had nothing to eat,” Esther Alvarez, a lawyer in charge of advocacy at the non-governmental CENCA Urban Development Institute, which has been working for more than 40 years in poor neighborhoods on the outskirts of Lima, such as those in the San Juan de Lurigancho district, told IPS by telephone.

Soup kitchens spontaneously emerged thanks to food donations and community organization based on solidarity, reciprocity and a humanitarian and rights-based approach, combining efforts with the local parishes, to address the growing hunger in areas invisible to the authorities, in the country’s capital itself.

In Lima, where a third of the national population is concentrated -almost 10 million inhabitants- poverty climbed from 14.2 percent to 27.5 percent, and it is estimated that with the crisis another 250,000 people have fallen into extreme poverty, unable to afford a basic food basket of 196 soles (49 dollars) a month.

Alvarez explained that in alliance with other civil society institutions, they organized the soup kitchens that emerged in different districts of Lima, creating a permanent online communication space, which continues to this day, while promoting the formation of the Network of Soup Kitchens of Metropolitan Lima.

The network and online communication space enable interaction between the organizers of the soup kitchens, mainly women, who have emerged as leaders in the fight against hunger and for the right to food, issues that should be addressed by the authorities.

Three women community organizers whose solidarity and efforts contribute to the food security of impoverished families in the area stand outside their local soup kitchen. From left to right, Mauricia Rodríguez, Fortunata Palomino and Elizabeth Huachilla. During the visit by IPS, the menu, cooked with firewood because of the lack of cooking gas, consisted of rice with panamito beans and fried bonito, a fish rich in Omega 3. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

Solidarity-based community efforts for a better life

The Network of Organized Women of Villa Torreblanca soup kitchen emerged in the upper part of the district of Carabayllo, located on the slopes of hills in the northern part of the capital. A few days after the national pandemic emergency was declared, it began to operate in the wooden house of Elizabeth Huachillo.

A native of Ayabaca in the northern highlands of Peru, she came to Lima at the age of 15 to find work and today, 40 years old and the mother of Lizbeth, 17, and Tracy, seven, she is the driving force behind the soup kitchen.

Huachillo drove a motorcycle taxi to support her family, but as a result of the lockdown she was unable to work and they were going hungry. “We had nothing to eat and I began to investigate how to create a soup kitchen. I looked up Señora Fortunata, who is a well-known and respected leader in the district, and together with her we launched it on Mar. 23,” 2020, she says while showing IPS the fish that will be served in today’s lunch.

Fortunata Palomino is 57 years old. From her native Ayacucho – a central Andean region devastated by the 1980-2000 internal armed conflict – she was sent to the capital by her parents when she was still a child. She went through many difficult situations to get ahead and put a roof over her head. She has four daughters who have managed to become professionals and she is proud she was able to make it possible for them to have an education.

While she and her husband ran their household, she became involved in different organizations to promote the rights of local people, including nutrition and a life free of violence for women and children.

She is familiar with the district and the plight of its people, especially in the shantytowns built on the hillsides where the houses are made of wood, families have no drinking water or sanitation and the roads are unpaved. “The authorites are absent here,” she complained.

She feels like a survivor when she thinks back to March 2020 and the terrible uncertainty, anxiety and fear that swept through the poorest families in her neighborhood.

“We were the first to start up a soup kitchen in Carabayllo, and many more followed suit, until there were 137,” she said.

In order to coordinate and strengthen their activities, they formed the Network of Soup Kitchens of Metropolitan Lima, of which she was elected general coordinator. As of November 2021, a total of 2,468 soup kitchens were registered there, feeding 257,000 people a day.

“Here in our soup kitchen we served 250 lunches a day at the peak of the crisis. Now we make 120 because some people have managed to return to their jobs as collectors, drivers or street vendors,” said Elizabeth Huachillo.

The solidarity price is two soles (51 cents). But nothing is charged in special cases, such as the elderly or people with tuberculosis. When the women find out someone has COVID, they leave the meals in plastic containers on their doorstep. And children orphaned by the death of their parents due to COVID-19 also receive free meals.

According to the Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations, in 2021, there were 98,000 minors orphaned by the pandemic.

“We are doing what the authorities should be doing because we could not remain indifferent to such desperation. Despite our efforts, it has been a struggle to achieve legal recognition of the soup kitchens so they can access budget funds; the law was passed last year and now it is time for it to be implemented,” Huachillo said.

With the political instability that Peru has experienced in recent years, four governments have already managed the pandemic, and each one has made some achievements in coordination with civil society organizations and the Food Security Board of the Municipality of Lima, a multisectoral body that brings together social organizations, non-governmental institutions and the State.

Esther Álvarez of CENCA said the challenges for this year include achieving the implementation of the food emergency law and the allocation of a budget for the soup kitchens to address the food emergency, and to get the government to approve a regulatory framework that incorporates them into a Zero Hunger Program.

For her part, Fortunata Palomino is thinking about the post-pandemic world and suggests that the government should train and certify the women currently running the soup kitchens in various activities so that they can join the formal labor market in the future. “We need our own incomes with jobs that respect our rights,” she said.

“We need a transformative change in our food and agricultural policies to have sustainability” – Ren Wang, FAO’s Agriculture and Consumer Protection Department. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
NAPLES, Italy, Oct 9 2014 (IPS)

In his parody of the Michael Jackson hit “Beat It”, the American satirist and singer Weird Al Yankovic has a parent urging his son to eat the food on his plate, warning that “other kids are starving in Japan”.

The parody has raised smiles since it was released 30 years ago, but today “Eat It” could be a battle cry for activists trying to reduce the widespread waste of enormous quantities of food, an urgent concern around the world and no laughing matter.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 1.3 billion tonnes of food go to waste globally every year. Meanwhile, 805 million of the world’s people are still experiencing chronic undernourishment or hunger, Ren Wang, Assistant Director General of FAO’s Agriculture and Consumer Protection Department, told the 11^th International Media Forum on the Protection of Nature.“Even if just one-fourth of the food currently lost or wasted globally could be saved, it would be enough to feed 870 million hungry people in the world” – SAVE FOOD Initiative

“We need a transformative change in our food and agricultural policies to have sustainability,” Wang said.

Organised by the Rome-based environmental group Greenaccord and hosted for the second time by the city of Naples from Oct. 8 to 11, this year’s forum – entitled ‘Feeding the World: Food, Agriculture and Environment’ – has brought together experts, journalists and policy makers.

It comes as the United Nations’ International Year of Family Farming draws to a close, and as rising food prices continue to pound the incomes of vulnerable groups.

Wang said that although global food production has tripled since 1946 and the world has reduced the prevalence of undernourishment over the past 20 years from 18.7 to 11.3 percent, food security is still a crucial issue.

The food that goes to waste is about one-third of current global food production, so expanding current agricultural output is not necessarily the answer. In fact, the world produces enough food for every individual to have about 2,800 calories each day, according to scientists. But while some people are able to waste food, others do not have enough.

Even if waste and hunger might not be directly related, there is unquestionable inequality in the world’s food system, said Gary Gardner, a senior fellow with the Worldwatch Institute, a research and outreach institute that focuses on sustainable policies.

“In wealthy countries, food waste often occurs at the level of the retailer or consumer, either at the grocery store or at home where a lot of food is thrown away,” he told IPS.

By contrast, food waste in developing countries mainly happens at the “farm or processing” levels, Gardner said. “Food is lost because usually there aren’t systems for getting it to processing facilities and then to the consumer efficiently.”

Food losses and waste amount to roughly 680 billion dollars in industrialised countries and 310 billion dollars in developing countries, according to the SAVE FOOD Initiative, a project involving the German trade fair group Messe Düsseldorf in collaboration with FAO and the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).

Saying that “consumers in rich countries waste almost as much food (222 million tonnes) as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (230 million tonnes)”, the SAVE FOOD initiative found that “even if just one-fourth of the food currently lost or wasted globally could be saved, it would be enough to feed 870 million hungry people in the world.”

In Europe, the vast quantity of food thrown out by supermarkets has sometimes sparked public outrage, especially in countries where it is illegal for people to help themselves to the rejected items.

British supermarket chain Tesco has acknowledged discarding some 28,500 tonnes of food in the first six months of 2013, according to reports, and in Britain overall, an estimated 15 million tonnes of food is wasted annually.

In the United States, agencies estimate that roughly 40 percent of the food produced is discarded in landfills, with supermarkets accounting for much of this.

Yet, on both sides of the Atlantic, people can be prosecuted for taking food from dumpsters – a sore point with some activists who have organised public campaigns that offer meals cooked from thrown-away food.

At the Naples forum, where experts discussed the social and environmental consequences of food waste, among other issues, Gardner of the Worldwatch Institute described the experiences of activist Rob Greenfield, who has fed himself entirely from food from dumpsters while cycling across the United States.

“Many times the food was in packages that hadn’t been opened – whole boxes of cereal, sodas, that kind of thing – that for various reasons had been thrown out but which was perfectly good food to him,” Gardner told IPS in an interview.

“That’s not the optimal way for us to get rid of waste,” he added. “The better way would be not to generate that waste in the first place.”

Some solutions

Tesco and several other British supermarket chains have agreed to a programme of waste reduction, and restaurants in several countries are also taking steps not only to decrease the waste but to turn it into biogas to be used for energy.

Gardner told IPS that instead of throwing away food, supermarkets should be looking at donating produce to local organisations such as soup kitchens, although it would be better if they “weren’t generating the waste to begin with.”

On biogas, some speakers said that using food or household waste for energy at the local level could contribute to wider environmental solutions, but again the main aim should be to stem the creation of waste.

“Food security and climate change have certain challenges in common,” said Adriana Opromollo, international advocacy officer for food security and climate change at Caritas Internationalis, a federation of charity organisations.

“At the local level, we have seen where using food or household waste can be a successful strategy. But we have to focus on solutions that are tailored to the particular context,” she told IPS.

The ways to reduce waste can begin simply. Some U.S. food services companies found that by providing only plates (without accompanying trays), in school cafeterias, students were encouraged to take only the food they could consume, consequently throwing away 25 percent less waste.

Perhaps schools should record another version of “Eat It” for lunch hour.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Children in the cafeteria of the Manuel Altolaguirre public school in the poor neighbourhood of La Palma-Palmilla, in the southern city of Málaga, Spain, which provides meals to the poorest students in the summertime. Credit: Inés Benítez/IPS

By Inés Benítez
MALAGA, Spain, Aug 6 2014 (IPS)

It’s two in the afternoon, and María stirs tomato sauce into a huge pot of pasta. School is out for the summer in Spain, but the lunchroom in this public school in the southern city of Málaga is still open, serving meals to more than 100 children from poor families.

“My son has had to take my grandson to summer school because he doesn’t have enough money to feed him.” -- Mercedes Arroyo
“The kitchen is always operating, winter and summer,” Miguel Ángel Muñoz, the prinicipal of the Manuel Altolaguirre school, told IPS. “There are families in situations of extreme need. For many children, the only hot meals they eat are what they are served at school.”

The school is in La Palma-Palmilla, one of the poorest neighbourhoods in this city in the southern autonomous community or region of Andalusia.

A number of reports have described the dire economic situation faced by many families with children in Spain, and the resultant problems of poor quality diets and child malnutrition.

There are 2.3 million children in Spain – 27.5 percent of the total – living under the poverty line, according to a study by UNICEF, the United Nations children’s fund.

The report, “La Infancia en España 2014” (Childhood in Spain 2014), released Jun. 24, found that the number of households with children where no adult is working increased 290 percent since 2007, the year before the global financial crisis broke out. Between 2007 and 2013 the total climbed from 325,000 to 943,000 families.

The unemployment rate in this country of 46.7 million people stands at 25.9 percent, according to the National Statistics Institute. Then there is the “working poor” who earn wages too low to cover mortgage payments or rent, utility bills and food.

“My mother sells lottery tickets and my father is at home,” Rafa told IPS just after eating pasta, salad and watermelon for lunch in the Manuel Altolaguirre school lunchroom. The eight-year-old has siblings aged four, 10 and 12.

Sitting next to him, 11-year-old Yeray said he and his brother Antonio have lunch at the school every day while his father works “carrying luggage in the airport.”

“The food is good,” said Yeray, who wants to “fix cars or be a policeman” when he grows up.

Daniel Fernández, with the local non-governmental organisation Animación Malacitana, who has been responsible for summertime activities in the school for 13 years, told IPS that “there are entire strata of society in emergency situations” and in need of help in Spain.

Since 2013 the government of Andalusia, the most populous autonomous community in Spain, has extended through the summer vacation period the aid it provides during the school year, and subsidises summer school in institutions like Manuel Altolaguirre in cities throughout the region.

In summer school, the poorest children are served breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack at no cost, while they participate in recreational and educational activities run by social organisations.

“My son has had to take my grandson to summer school because he doesn’t have enough money to feed him,” Mercedes Arroyo, who has three children – aged 18, 24 and 28 – and three grandchildren – two seven-year-olds and a 10-year-old – told IPS.

“And many of us are in that situation,” said her husband, Enrique Sánchez, outside the “25 Mujeres” “economato social” – government shops that sell basic foodstuffs and cleaning and hygiene products at cost to poor families – in La Palma-Palmilla.

It is now common to see grandparents supporting their children and grandchildren – and even great-grandchildren – on their small pensions. Rosario Ruíz, 67, draws a disability pension of 365 euros (500 dollars) and lives with her 26-year-old unemployed granddaughter who is a single mother of two children, aged two and five.

“Are you going to write about how I need help? Are you going to tell?” Ruíz asked IPS after shopping in the ‘economato’.

The families of some 200,000 children in Spain can’t afford a meal based on beef, chicken or fish every two days, the NGO Educo reported on its website.

Poor nutrition in childhood can have irreversible effects on children’s health, abilities and development, experts say.

“Parents need school lunchrooms to be open in the summertime too,” said Muñoz, who stressed the vulnerability of the children who attend schools in La Palma-Palmilla.

The children mainly come from gypsy (Roma) or other immigrant families, most of them from Romania. They are served breakfast and lunch, and are given an afternoon snack in a bag to take home, year-round as part of an anti-poverty plan run by the socialist government of Andalusia, one of the regions with the highest unemployment rates in Spain.

Different NGOs in Málaga also organise summer activities for poor children. For example, Málaga Acoge runs ¡Queremos montar un circo! (We Want to Mount a Circus!) for 120 immigrant children, financed through microdonations, while Prodiversa ran a summer camp in July for 23 children between the ages of six and 11, subsidised by the Obra Social la Caixa Proinfancia and offering meals, tutoring and counseling.

Spain is the European Union country with the second highest level of child poverty, following Romania, according to a report by Caritas Europa on the social impact of the austerity policies applied in the countries hit hardest by the economic crisis, released Mar. 27.

Caritas, a Catholic social assistance organisation, put the proportion of children under 18 in Spain living on the edge of social exclusion at 29.9 percent.

And the report Child Poverty and Social Exclusion in Europe published by Save the Children in June put the proportion at 33.8 percent.

“It’s a chronicle of impoverishment foretold,” economist Juan Torres López told IPS. He said the “policies involving steep cutbacks have dismantled the social services and basic collective assets,” turning Spain into “the country with the worst inequalities in Europe.”

According to the economist, the government of right-wing Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has adopted “inadequate, unfair and ineffective” measures to combat the economic crisis, instead of opting for “alternatives that could bring good results such as tax reforms aimed at greater equality and financing that is not set up to benefit the banks.”

The budget earmarked for children in Spain fell 14.6 percent from 2010 to 2013, UNICEF reported.

Cuts in public spending began during the administration of socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (2004-2011). But the biggest cutbacks in social expenditure in democracy in Spain have been applied since Rajoy took office.

Teachers and members of social organisations told IPS that some students ask to fill their plates three times in the school lunchrooms. Many don’t even have hot water at home to take showers in the winter, because they live in broken homes or come from extremely poor families.

“Good thing the summer comes. Then I don’t mind taking a shower with cold water,” a boy whose family could not afford a water heater or gas cylinder every month told Fernández.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Families demonstrating to demand respect for their right to a roof over their heads, before the authorities evicted 13 families, including a dozen children, from the Buenaventura “corrala” or squat in the southern Spanish city of Málaga. Credit: Inés Benítez/IPS

By Inés Benítez
MALAGA, Spain, Apr 9 2014 (IPS)

“I don’t want them to grow up with the notion that they’re poor,” says Catalina González, referring to her two young sons. The family has been living in an apartment rent-free since December in exchange for fixing it up, in the southern Spanish city of Málaga.

Six months ago González, 40, and her two sons, Manuel and Leónidas, 4 and 5, were evicted by the local authorities from the Buenaventura “corrala” or squat – an old apartment building with a common courtyard that had been occupied by 13 families who couldn’t afford to pay rent. The evicted families included a dozen children.

Since then, she told IPS, her sons “don’t like the police because they think they stole their house.”

Spain has the second-highest child poverty rate in the European Union, following Romania, according to the report “The European Crisis and its Human Cost – A Call for Fair Alternatives and Solutions” released Mar. 27 in Athens by Caritas Europa.

Bulgaria is in third place and Greece in fourth, according to the Roman Catholic relief, development and social service organisation.

The austerity measures imposed in Europe, aggravated by the foreign debt, “have failed to solve problems and create growth,” said Caritas Europa’s Secretary General Jorge Nuño at the launch of the report.

“We’re doing ok. The kids are already pre-enrolled in school for the next school year,” said González, a native of Barcelona, who left the father of her sons in Italy when she discovered that “he mistreated them.”

She started over from scratch in Málaga, with no family, job or income, meeting basic needs thanks to the solidarity of social organisations and mutual support networks.

According to a report published this year by the United Nations children’s fund UNICEF, in 2012 more than 2.5 million children in Spain lived in families below the poverty line – 30 percent of all children.

UNICEF reported that 19 percent of children in Spain lived in households with annual incomes of less than 15,000 dollars.

“Child poverty is a reality in Spain, although politicians want to gloss over it and they don’t like us to talk about it because it’s associated with Third World countries,” the founder and president of the NGO Mensajeros de la Paz (Messengers of Peace), Catholic priest Ángel García, told IPS.

Spain’s finance minister Cristóbal Montoro said on Mar. 28 that the information released by Caritas Europa “does not fully reflect reality” because it is based solely on “statistical measurements.”

But in Málaga “there are more and more mothers lining up to get food,” Ángel Meléndez, the president of Ángeles Malagueños de la Noche, told IPS.

Every day, his organisation provides 500 breakfasts, 1,600 lunches and 600 dinners to the poor.

For months, González and her sons have been taking their meals at the “Er Banco Güeno”, a community-run soup kitchen in the low-income Málaga neighbourhood of Palma-Palmilla, which operates out of a closed-down bank branch.

According to Father Ángel, child poverty “isn’t just about not being able to afford food, but also about not being able to buy school books or not buying new clothes in the last two years.”

“It’s about unequal opportunity among children,” he said.

The crisis in Spain is still severe. The country’s unemployment rate is the highest in the EU: 25.6 percent in February, after Greece’s 27.5 percent.

In 2013, the government of right-wing Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy approved a National Action Plan for Social Inclusion 2013-2016, which includes the aim of reducing child poverty.

Caritas Europa reports that at least one and a half million households in Spain are suffering from severe social inclusion – 70 percent more than in 2007, the year before the global financial crisis broke out.

“Entire families end up on the street because they can’t afford to pay rent,” Rosa Martínez, the director of the Centro de Acogida Municipal, told IPS during a visit to the municipal shelter. “More people are asking for food. They’re even asking for diapers for newborns because they are in such a difficult situation.”

Of the nearly 26 percent of the economically active population out of jobs, half are young people, according to the National Statistics Institute, while the gap between rich and poor is growing.

As of late March, 4.8 million people were unemployed, according to official statistics. The figures also show that the proportion of jobless people with no source of income whatsoever has grown to four out of 10.

Social discontent has been fuelled by austerity measures that have entailed cutbacks in health, education and social protection.

A report on the Housing Emergency in the Spanish State, by the Platform for Mortgage Victims (PAH) and the DESC Observatory, estimates that 70 percent of the families who have been, or are about to be, evicted include at least one minor.

“The right to equal opportunities is dead letter if children are ending up on the street,” José Cosín, a lawyer and activist with PAH Málaga, told IPS.

Cosín denounced the vulnerable situation of the children who were evicted along with their families from the Buenaventura corrala on Oct. 3, 2013.

Fifteen of the people who were evicted filed a lawsuit demanding respect of the children’s basic rights, as outlined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which went into effect in 1990.

The Convention establishes that states parties “shall in case of need provide material assistance and support programmes, particularly with regard to nutrition, clothing and housing.”

The number of families in Spain with no source of income at all grew from 300,000 in mid-2007 to nearly 700,000 by late 2013, according to the report Precariedad y Cohesión Social; Análisis y Perspectivas 2014 (Precariousness and Social Cohesion; Analysis and Perspectives 2014), by Cáritas Española and the Fundación Foessa.

And 27 percent of households in Spain are supported by pensioners. Grown-up sons and daughters are moving back into their parents’ homes with their families, or retired grandparents are helping support their children and grandchildren, with their often meagre pensions.

“When times get rough, the social fabric is strengthened,” said González. She stressed the solidarity of different groups in Málaga who for three months helped her clean up and repair the apartment she is living in now, which is on the tenth floor of a building with no elevator, and was full of garbage and had no door, window panes or piped water.

González complained that government social services are underfunded and inefficient, and said she receives no assistance from them.

Like all young children, her sons ask her for things. But she explains to them that it is more important to spend eight euros on food than on two plastic fishes. It took her several weeks to save up money to buy the toys. Last Christmas she took them to a movie for the first time.

Thirty people eat lunch every day at the Emaús soup kitchen in Torremolinos, on the outskirts of Málaga. Credit: Inés Benítez/IPS

By Inés Benítez
MÁLAGA, Spain , Nov 14 2012 (IPS)

A huge pot of rice steams on the stove at the soup kitchen run by Emaús in the municipality of Torremolinos, on the outskirts of this southern Spanish city. This morning, like every other, Pepi, Adriana and Diego are cooking for over a hundred people who can no longer afford to feed themselves.

As the already record-high unemployment rate climbs and growing numbers of people are evicted from their homes because they cannot keep up on their mortgage or rent payments, the economic crisis in Spain has also led to an upsurge in the number of people depending on soup kitchens, most of which are run by non-profit organisations or private foundations that receive government funding.

“My mother is out of work and she has three children,” Dominican immigrant Dariana, 18, tells IPS while stopping by the Emaús soup kitchen at noon to pick up servings of rice, salad, sandwiches, bread and fruit for the four members of her family.

Emaús, a Catholic humanitarian organisation with six employees and numerous volunteers, delivers meals to the homes of sick and elderly people as well as distributing food at its headquarters in Torremolinos. At around 12:30 every day, people begin to queue up, waiting to take away bags of food. An hour later, others will sit down to eat lunch in a dining hall with room for 30.

“I never imagined that I would have to come here and ask for food,” remarked Jessica, 29, holding her two-year-old daughter Janira’s hand. She lives in her mother-in-law’s house, but has been coming to Emaús for two months because she and her husband have both lost their jobs and have no income anymore, “and there are four mouths to feed,” she told IPS.

In the past few years, poverty has become “more extensive, intensive and chronic” in Spain, according to a recent report by the Spanish branch of Caritas, another Catholic organisation. Food is one of the “basic needs in highest demand” in Spain, followed by housing and employment, the report says.

More than 21 percent of the population of 47 million is living below the poverty line this year, according to the Economically Active Population Survey conducted by the National Institute of Statistics (INE). The survey also found that 12.7 percent of households have difficulty making ends meet at the end of the month, and 7.4 percent are behind on the payment of housing-related costs.

The poverty line is currently set by the INE at 7,355 euro (9,339 dollars) for a one-person household.

“There are more and more people asking for food. It’s overwhelming,” Pepi comments to IPS while stirring the rice. “Most of the people we help have homes, but they can no longer afford to buy food.”

Working alongside Pepi is Diego, who is unemployed and has volunteered at Emaús since July. He is putting the finishing touches on the salad, while Adriana, who came to Spain from Uruguay in search of a better life, is busy chopping Swiss chard that will later be stored in freezers.

The president of Emaús, Antonio Abril, told IPS that the profile of people who use soup kitchens has changed since the global crisis that erupted in 2008 in the United States spread to Spain and other countries of the European Union.

In the past, the organisation almost exclusively served the elderly. But today its clientele has expanded to include “younger people who live on the street or are squatters or have been evicted.”

To eat at Emaús, “the only requirement is to be poor,” said Abril.

The people who come to the organisation for help are referred by the Málaga city government’s social services and must be registered residents of the municipality, Luis Romero told IPS. Romero, a retired teacher, was one of the three founders of Emaús in Torremolinos 16 years ago. The organisation also runs soup kitchens in Estepona, in the province of Málaga, and in Guadix and Baza, in neighbouring Granada.

Every day, two Emaús workers head out in a van to pick up donations of fruit, vegetables and other food products from the Málaga food bank, private businesses and charitable foundations whose contributions make it possible to prepare free meals from Monday to Saturday.

At 1:30 in the afternoon, the dining hall at Emaús headquarters in Torremolinos is ready for 30 diners. The tables are covered in pink tablecloths and set with plates and cutlery. The walls are decorated with religious-themed paintings, crowned by a large wooden cross and two cages with bright yellow birds.

“Thank goodness we are here and we can survive,” Marco comments to IPS while eating rice. Originally from Poland, Marco lost his construction job four years ago, and has been eating at the Emaús dining hall for the past year. He lives with his sister and niece, who are also unemployed, and is six months behind on his housing payments.

Due to the rise in unemployment, which is over 25 percent – the highest rate in the EU – a growing number of people can no longer meet their mortgage payments and are consequently evicted. But even when they end up on the street, they still owe the bank the pending payments.

Sitting at the table with Marco is Halina, a Belarusian woman with short curly hair. After she arrived in Spain in 2003, she found work in the hotel industry. But she lost her job, her welfare benefits ran out, and now she has “nowhere to sleep.”

The oldest of the diners is 94-year-old Encarnación, who has put on bright red lipstick for her visit to Emaús. She comments that “lately a lot of young people have been coming here to eat because there’s no work.” Romero adds that, normally, there are more men than women at the lunch tables, and regulars include immigrants, people who sleep in cars and doorways, and a few mentally ill people.

“There has been a remarkable increase in middle-class people who have found themselves forced to ask for food,” volunteer Felisa Castro, one of the founders of Ángeles Malagueños de la Noche (Málaga Angels of the Night), told IPS.

Founded three years ago, this non-profit organisation runs on donations and the work of volunteers who deliver hundreds of breakfasts, lunches and dinners daily. The meals are prepared in a small house in a central neighbourhood of Málaga, this southern Spanish city that for many years was a popular destination for immigrants seeking a better life.