The Social Cantina of Cáritas Paroquial da Matriz de Portimão will start serving on Sunday, February 22, "20 to 30 meals" to "elderly people and other people with serious economic difficulties" who live in the old center of the city, he revealed to Sul Informação Father Mário Sousa, responsible for the project.
Cooking and serving food will be volunteers from the parish of Portimão, who have organized themselves for this purpose. As well as, soon, there will be a group of volunteers to take the meal to the homes of people alone, who cannot move.
The Cantina Social will be installed in the space of an old restaurant on Rua Diogo Gonçalves, next to the headquarters of Cáritas, which was purposely acquired by the Parish to «respond to the high number of needy people who live in the city center and who, for economic hardship or incapacity (due to age or illness), days go by without a cooked meal'.
“There is a pocket of poverty in the old center of Portimão, mainly composed of elderly people, many of them living alone, but not alone,” explained Father Mário.
The Social Canteen will operate under a regime of takeaways, in which the food (dinner) will be taken home in its own container and in such a way as to allow not only the dinner of that day, but also the lunch of the following one.
To begin with, the Cantina will serve "20 to 30 dinners a day, for cases already identified, but that number could increase," added Father Mário.
Cáritas de Portimão already develops a broad social action in the city, providing monthly assistance to more than 200 families (about 700 people), with food, clothing and technical assistance, as well as occasional help with medication, electricity and water. This is another initiative in this scope.
But Cáritas wants to go further and, for this very reason, it is one of the vertices of the “Tão Close to You” project, which also involves the Parish Council of Portimão and the Humanitarian Association of local Volunteer Firefighters.
This project, promoted by the Parish Council, is presented as «a process of human, technical and logistical cooperation between the parties involved, in order to provide assistance to people in need and with limited mobility, who are referenced by social services, through the distribution of prepared meals, screenings and basic health control to beneficiaries».
According to Álvaro Bila, president of the Board and the Association of Volunteer Firefighters, the objective is "to support families who come to us every day in difficult economic and social situations, either because of unemployment or because of the current situation."
Thus, in addition to assigning an annual subsidy to the Cáritas Cantina Social and providing punctual collaboration, as has now been the case with the small works and necessary interventions in the old restaurant where the Cantina's new service will operate.
But the project also provides for weekly health screening actions for people supported and identified by the Social Action services of the Portimão Chamber. These screenings will be provided by the Association of Voluntary Firefighters of Portimão, thus enabling the monitoring or early diagnosis of diseases, through the measurement of blood pressure, cholesterol and blood glucose levels.
Ana Figueiredo, councilor with the responsibility for Social Action in the Portimão Council, points out that the action of Cáritas is part of the «social emergency network» created in the municipality, supporting people who are also «supported by the municipality in other areas, namely at the level of rents, medicines, social tax on water and social housing”.
Commenting on the statements of the president of the Social Security Institute who, this week, said that in recent months there were fewer people looking for social canteens, councilwoman Ana Figueiredo guaranteed that «this is not the reality in Portimão and the Algarve». where “unemployment continues to be very high and families are struggling with more and more problems”.
Caritas Parish of the Parish of Portimão was founded by the Parish about four years ago, "as a way of giving an immediate response to the growing number of people who, due to the consequences of the crisis, were already looking for it, already in despair", explains, in turn, Father Mario.
It is formed only by volunteers from the Christian community, totaling about 90 people.
Padre Mário: Cantina will serve "20 to 30 dinners a day, for cases already identified, but this number could increase"
“Although with the name of the world organization of the Catholic Church, the Parish Caritas are autonomous and depend exclusively on the local Parish, both in the organization and in the income for the assistance they provide”, added the parish priest of Portimão.
In 2014, Cáritas da Matriz distributed 67.083 kilos of food, in collaboration with the Food Bank, 6.041 items of clothing, and 34.414,21 euros in various aid, money "exclusively resulting from donations from parishioners".
In Portimão there is already another social canteen, the Padre Arsénio Social Center, in the Senhora do Amparo area, but which provides assistance to "a different population", especially homeless people and drug addicts.
The opening of the Cantina Social da Cáritas will be attended by the Bishop of the Algarve, D. Manuel neto Quintas, who will bless the facilities. The inauguration will take place on February 22, at 10:00 am.
Comments