Marco Carvalho
Members of the Mother’s Meal committee in Macau – a project that since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic has distributed more than 700,000 dry food kits in countries such as India, the Philippines, South Sudan or Ethiopia – are appealing to the generosity of the local residents. The organization is asking the Macau population to provide its support to around four dozen unemployed mothers.
Over the past six months, the Mother’s Meal initiative has provided diapers and powdered milk to more than four dozen babies living in precarious conditions, Father Jijo Kandamkulathy told O CLARIM. The vast majority of these children were born to migrant workers who lost their jobs and remain trapped in Macau due to the Covid-19 pandemic: “These children were born in Macau during the pandemic. Some of the mothers are single parents. Since they had small babies and could not go out for a job, they subsisted on charity alone. These unemployed mothers can’t afford even the basic living expenses. Therefore, Mother’s Meal started to provide these poor babies with milk powder and diapers in May 2021,” the Claretian missionary explained. “Milk powder and diapers are expensive. Each baby needs about MOP 350 to 800 on milk powder and diapers every ten days, the range of the expenses depending on the brand of the milk powder the babies consume. Most of the unemployed mothers are undernourished and lack breast milk. As they cannot even provide breast milk, milk powder is vital and the only food available for these babies. The committee members of the Mother’s Meal project now appeal for everyone to support these poor unemployed mothers generously,” the Indian priest pleaded.
Supporting unemployed mothers is one of the main initiatives that the Mother’s Meal project is currently promoting in Macau. It stopped providing, in October, hot meals to the neediest. Last month, the fifth World Day of the Poor was celebrated with the distribution of a hundred food kits both to residents and migrant workers faced with the spectre of food insecurity: “Dry food kits were given to one hundred people. Forty of them were Macau residentes, while the rest of them were overseas workers who were unemployed. The food distributed that day was brought to the altar and blessed before being distributed. The participants were mostly the underprivileged section of our society,” Jijo Kandamkulathy reported. “We formally closed the distribution of hot food by October. Though we continued until November 10 for a smaller number of people. There were about 100 unemployed or underemployed overseas workers benefiting out of it,” the Claretian missionary explains.
Launched in the summer of 2020 in India, at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Mother’s Meal initiative spread to to other countries and has distributed more than 700,000 dry food kits and almost one million hot meals over the last two years in places such as Nepal, India, South Sudan, the Philippines, Uganda or Ethiopia: “Mother’s Meal has collectively distributed 60, 000 monthly dry food kits and over 70,000 hot meals. Having in mind the dimension of this whole crisis, this might not be a significant number. But, for many of those who received our help, it made a difference between desperation and hope, between life and death,” Father Jijo Kandamkulathy concluded
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