Thank you again to all of you who contributed! Amazing response!

Here is the financial situation of this campaign at the moment:

In summary: we have already made two food deliveries with the help of our campaign's funding, in addition to the two deliveries that were already made before, on local funding alone. And we still have funds for at least 2 or 3 deliveries of the same size, probably more, depending on local donations.

Here is the detail of each delivery we made to date,and which amounts of food were purchased and delivered.

The amounts are in Bolivianos (BOB, the local currency) and Euros. The exchange rate is about 7.75 BOB for one EUR.

Note: the quintal is a weight unit that is much used in Bolivia for food in wholesale. For example, the big bags of rice, flour etc. are often one or one half quintal. One quintal is worth 45 kg. That is why many of the quantities below are in multiple of 45 kg.

As you can see, a relatively small amount of money goes a very long way!

This last Wednesday I had the day off, I so went on the delivery trip with Cristina and Paola. They hired a "micro" (small bus) to transport us and all the food.

This time, in addition to the "ollas comunes" in our area, we went further from the city center too, where less help reaches. We were really on the outskirts of town, where the urban area meets the countryside. We had a contact for one "olla comun" in that area and found another two. It was really a mixed feeling. Glad to be able to help, of course, but also sad to see the conditions these people live in. Especially now, since the weather is quite bad (there was even flooding a week ago), and the houses provide little shelter against the cold and the wind.

I'll let the pictures I took tell the story better than words.

And here some more photos taken the woman who organizes one of the ollas comunes:

The Covid-19 situation in Bolivia keeps getting worse and the number of cases gets higher, especially in Santa Cruz. Despite that, and because of social and political pressure, the lock down is getting eased starting next week, with some activities starting again, some shops open, some public transportation allowed and so on.

But the economy has been so badly hit that the situation is not going to get much better for the most affected people any time soon. It is actually quite visible and shocking: at almost every intersection in the city, there are now people begging, for money and food. Sometimes whole families are there, small children selling sweets for a few cents etc. On our delivery trip we had some individual bags packed with essential foods: rice, pasta, flour, beans... So we could give them to some of these people begging. But it really felt like a drop in the ocean.

So, all we hope is for the situation to get better as soon as possible, and for us to be able to keep helping for as long as we can.