SOS Children Mexico: on site experiences during the food crisis
20/06/2008
How has the food crisis affected our programmes in Mexico?
Family Strengthening Programme Mexico
One of the programmes in Mexico, which is being most affected by this crisis, is the family strengthening programme in Mexico. Everything is harder in a huge city like Mexico. Even before the crisis it was complicated to run this programme in Mexico. Due to the fact that it is so complicated to build alliances and governmental support, everything has to be solved by SOS Children and the families themselves. Since the beginning of this crisis, the families who are in the programmes have seen how much the prices have increased: for example, rice from 12 USD to 22 USD, corn oil from 20 USD to 30 USD and beans from 12 USD to 20 USD. In order to keep up the availability of high quality food it was necessary to request a little money from the children’s parents to cope with this crisis.
SOS Children's Village Tehuacan
Due to the higher food prices, the families are starting to use up their savings. Families are already exhausting the money they had planned to use for school graduation parties. Nowadays, families can not continue to live on the same amount of money. They have to expand their budget. The village is dependant on donations of goods such as: milk, corn flour, beans, soy, corn flour, rice, tuna, gelatin etc. However, there isn't enough for the whole community. A spokesperson of SOS Children's Village Tehuacan says: "We expect that if food prices continue to increase, we will have troubles with the family budget for the third quarter."
SOS Children's Village Mexico
The food crisis has not yet affected the village. There have not been any drastic changes in the families’ life style. However, people are expecting a continuation of the food price increase and with it direct consequences for the families’ budget.
SOS Children's Village Morelia
The families of the SOS Children's Village Morelia can mainly feel the food price increase when the SOS mothers buy milk, corn oil, tortillas and eggs. The change started last month. The corn oil’s price has increased from 1.8 USD to 4.6 USD in just one month. Some families have started to use money from their savings, intended for uniforms, in order to continue buying the same quantity of products. Families are scared about what the situation will be like in the following months. An additional tortilla’s price increase came into effect on Monday, 2 June 2008. In order to save some money, people in Morelia are advised to do their shopping at the local supermarkets. However, also the small businesses have been affected.
SOS Children's Village Tijuana
SOS Children's Village Tijuana has started taking actions against the food crisis some months ago when the rice problem was first recognized. The village came up with the idea of requesting food donations. "We launched a rice collection and today we have a reserve which will be enough for the next six months. We also started asking for other products such as milk, beans, grain products etc. a huge amount of all these products has been given to us, but we still need more."
In the village the main topic of the people is the food crisis. For example the corn oil price, just like other main goods (beans, milk, eggs), has tripled. If the food prices continue to rise, families will have to start using savings initially intended for school and stationary stuff. "If children start school this will be a problem, and therefore we are also doing a school and stationary stuff collection. If we had not previously started these preventions, the family budget would have been heavily affected."
Family Strengthening Programme Comitan
This programme has not been affected yet, because the families in this programme are provided with food from governmental authorities. The products range from main products such as rice, beans, sugar, corn oil, milk, soup to corn flour. Each family is supplied with 300 kg of beans, 300 kg of rice, 25 kg of sugar, 25 milk boxes with 12 liters and 150 packages of milk each.
SOS Children's Village Tuxtla
The SOS mothers in this village have already discussed the difficult situation with the director in April. They realised changes in their expenses mainly for oil corn, sugar, meat and groceries. They have had to start using the savings for uniforms, school registration payments, and shoes.
They have not been able to buy new clothes since December. In addition, the SOS mothers have to invest much time looking for cheaper goods and they can not buy the same quantity of goods. The families used to eat meat three or four times per week, whereas nowadays they can’t have meat as often as they used to.
They try to go to supermarkets so that they can save some pesos, but the public transportation price has also increased and therefore they don't go to supermarkets very often.
Relevant Countries: Mexico.