Education and Food for South American Children

Imagine a place where grocery stores often are empty, where you might walk 20 kilometers in scorching heat to reach a gas station for fuel for your car, where water or electricity can be off for a week at a time, and where parents have begun to abandon young children on the streets for lack of money to feed them.

Should a 10-year-old live on the streets with a gunshot wound?

Should a young boy’s feet bleed for lack of shoes?

Should a toddler have to eat out of a garbage can?

While it may not be all over the news, this has begun to become the reality in some parts of South America. The biggest casualties are the children.

This is a hidden crisis.

Children have been going hungry, or even starving. They have been being abandoned by their parents for lack of money to feed them, living without proper clothing or protective footwear, going without vital medical or dental treatments, missing their educations, and coming under the control of human traffickers and criminal gangs.

Charity United volunteers are on the ground in South America, bringing help to these children.

Some of the aid we have been providing to the children, both inside and outside community centers, includes the following:

• Nourishing food, such as soup with real bone broth, chicken, vegetables, and oatmeal
• Clothing and shoes
• Shelter (providing short-term shelter, and arranging long-term shelter)
• Education and free classes
• Medical, dental, and eye care
• Therapy (speech therapy, learning therapy, and trauma therapy)
• Safety and security, including community centers where children can study and play, where volunteers and firemen function as security guards