2020-09-30

Navigating the Pandemic: Liliana's Testimony

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We keep in touch with the organizations in the network to know how they are holding up, how the community is doing, and what challenges they see ahead.

Today we share the ideas of Liliana, founder of Ángeles Traviesos, who works tirelessly for the community and is always a source of inspiration for everyone. Liliana referred to how she sees the community today:

"What I see happening to the neighborhood is that it is facing many needs. It's a neighborhood where both the mothers and fathers work and the one that doesn't rent is finishing the little house. Many work in family homes, the majority of the men are bricklayers or drivers, and it's a very complicated situation at the moment. Two or three families come to our community kitchen every week wanting to sign up for the food and we do not have the capacity to receive any more families."

She also told us what she sees as the most important challenges and highlighted the emotional side of the situation we are currently experiencing:

"What challenges do I see? The biggest one we have is to see how we get up...people are very angry with the situation itself not with me, not with the country or the president, they are angry with everything because they feel frustrated because they can't pay the rent, and because they can't go out to work. They know that the situation we're going through is real, it's not a lie, but the biggest challenge is to give these people a little bit of security - I don't know where we're going to get it - and to believe again that yes, in our country you can improve and there's going to be work and the money is going to cover everything, but the truth is that there's a lot we can't do because you go to the supermarket today and it's a certain thing for 1000 pesos and you go in a week and it comes out 1700, then when the president speaks and says that all the prices are frozen, it turns out that they're not and that frustrates them a lot. We have a great challenge that is to get out of the pandemic and see how we can get people excited and lose their anger."

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