“Auntie, I’m hungry!” It’s hard to learn on an empty stomach.
Committed to providing good nutrition and comprehensive care to each child served in our PEPE units, we established a partnership with the Fundación Reparando Portillos to facilitate the implementation of community dining halls in each beneficiary church, while also offering health and protection brigades.
In 2022, we began offering daily lunch to 150 children, serving both PEPE children and those living around the church who are in vulnerable social situations. The first PEPE unit to benefit was Piedra de Ayuda at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Cartagena.
We noticed significant benefits and continued working on expanding, constructing dining halls in other PEPE units. We celebrate the achievement of having implemented community dining halls in 22 units in the Bolívar region, where we provide meals to 2,200 children from Monday to Friday.
Today, many children who suffered from chronic malnutrition have been helped by the care provided in PEPE’s children’s dining halls, resulting in a significant reduction in malnutrition cases. Our goal is to promote balanced nutrition to ensure the right to healthy eating, reducing and preventing malnutrition, managing food safety and phytosanitary risks, and overseeing food and nutritional security through intersectoral management.
Through PEPE’s work, we have managed to open three new units, representing three new churches being planted through PEPE, reaching 60 more children. We want to keep growing. There are still 51 units awaiting dining halls, so please pray for us and for this great challenge! We know that with God, everything is possible!
Adalci Angulo – Coordinator of PEPE Colombia
Carmen Ligia – Text Editor
