Food and Nutrition
MdC provides nutritious food to families that attend our programs on a regular basis. In the community of migrants that we serve in San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora Mexico, few families can access or afford healthy food. Our food programs are important for supporting health in the community.
Our humanitarian aid programs are intended to be a temporary measure as we work with families to address the barriers that keep families in poverty and seek to provide empowerment solutions. Once a month, we provide 7-10 days worth of nutritious food to 45-60 families in our empowerment programs. In addition, we serve a healthy meal 5-days per week at our education programs and each Saturday at our Super Saturday Program. Each meal is reviewed by our nutritionists to ensure that we provide high-quality food that contains nutrients for a balanced diet.
MdC’s Feed-A-Family Program provides nutritious food to families in our empowerment programs.
Staff on our food team work hard to purchase fresh food and assemble it for families.
Lack of Access to Healthy Food
Extreme poverty makes it very difficult for families to access healthy food. Low prices for junk food and soda make them the cheapest ways to get calories. Even if people could afford better quality food, there are no grocery stores that sell fruits or vegetables in the community. Furthermore, many homes lack refrigerators and so they cannot properly store fresh food.
Many families have never even been taught how to identify nutritious foods or why it is important to eat healthy and balanced meals. Unhealthy diets in the community lead to health issues including nutrient deficiencies, obesity, poor mental health, diabetes. and more.
our Feed-a-family program
Our Feed-A-Family program provides 7-10 days worth of healthy groceries to families every month. Our food program reduces food insecurity in the community and is just one part of our effort to improve the health and wellness of the families in the community. The groceries include milk, eggs, lean meats (beef, chicken, turkey, and tuna), fresh vegetables (celery, lettuce, tomatoes, zucchini, avocados, potatoes, carrots, and onions), fresh fruits (apples, bananas, oranges, pears, mango), and dry goods (oatmeal, oil, bread, beans, and rice).
In order to concentrate our resources on empowerment with the goal of helping families to become self-sufficient, families must attend our other health and education programs to receive food. This system ensures that we do not create dependency. Rather, food is another tool we use to empower families who are committed to addressing their different areas of poverty.
We provide 7-10 days worth of fresh, healthy groceries once a month to families in our Feed-A-Family program.
Warm healthy meals
At our Super Saturday community events, we serve nourishing and healthy snacks such as tuna sandwiches or yogurt with berries and granola. Additionally, our education program serves healthy meals daily. To address deficiencies in calcium, we incorporate either milk or yogurt into every meal. Children love the milk and will often ask for second and third servings. Every meal also includes fruits and vegetables.
Educating the community
Education on nutrition is one of our main strategies to improve health in the community. Families want to know how to eat better and follow the advice given by our team. We teach the importance of eating balanced meals with carbs, proteins, and nutrients from fruits and vegetables.
Once our Casa Esperanza Empowerment Center is built, MdC wants to teach families how to better prepare and cook the food that we provide using menus and recipes provided along with their monthly groceries. These new recipes will teach families how to incorporate fruits and vegetables into their meals and use healthy foods.
Children are also taught about the importance of health, exercise, and dental care. We help them understand the importance of eating healthy through many of our creative and fun lessons. Teachers have noticed that these lessons have made children more willing to try new healthy foods.
Children eat fruits and vegetables at every meal we serve.
Women learn about nutrition at one of our health seminars.
“Access to healthy food is a right.”
the importance of healthy food
Incorporating nutrition into our programs is critical to helping families address the physical poverty that they face. MdC has seen how access to healthy food allows students to be focused, attentive, and less anxious in school. Healthy foods go beyond physical health and enhance students' learning by improving their mental health. Healthy eating will have many long-term benefits for the community going forward.
How To Help
To support us in providing healthy food to families in Mexico, please consider donating to MdC. Providing healthy food costs us $6,800 a month—$5,000 for our Feed-A-Family grocery program, $1,200 for education program meals, and $600 for Super Saturday program meals. You can donate by clicking the link below.