SAN DIEGO – At the height of the pandemic, a neighbor of a Latin neighborhood of San Diego brought out a table with some fruit and vegetables to help the most needy. He called it the “Table of Justice and Hope” , a project that now feeds more than 1 free of charge, 200 families every month.
This small initiative arose from a “genuine desire to help, even if it was with a little ”to the families most impacted by the pandemic in the Sherman neighborhood, explains its creator, Christian Ramírez .
It began last year with a few dozen oranges, lemons and a few vegetables, but now trucks with donated food arrive at this table and it has a group of immigrant mothers who take turns helping the community all day.
“My family and I were very concerned to see other families in the neighborhood without unemployment help, without transportation, or food or official aid,” recalls Ramírez.
Faced with this scenario, he took a table out of his house on which he spread the products grown in his garden and added some cans of food and placed a sign in which he invited passersby to take whatever they needed from there , and, if they could, leave something in exchange for other neighbors also in need.
Soon elderly people began to arrive in search of potatoes and fruits and left canned or other perishable products in exchange.
The table, says Ramírez, has supported this year immigrants from “almost all over the world”, although most of the people who come in search of food are Latinos.
Direct help for those in need by the pandemic
While waiting for the volunteers to finish arranging food. Mrs. Armida Lara, a neighbor of the Latin neighborhood of Logan, explains that this project has been a “great help” for them in the midst of the pandemic and sees “admirable” what these “people with such good hearts” do.
The need was real. Food banks were generally far away and their opening hours were not accessible either to families who, in the midst of one of the fiercest stages of the pandemic, had to transfer at public transportation for hours to get closer to them.
And as the residents of this area of San Diego County found out about the project of the table, they began to participate with what they could.
They were joined by residents of neighborhoods with greater purchasing power who began to collect donations for this project that little by little was ceasing to be a single space that offered the small table to be something much bigger.
Product donations began to arrive from the field
Now there are unions that make some purchases and go to Sherman to leave them, but the most notable change began when people linked to the field joined the project .
Ramírez explains that an importer of fresh Mexican products began to donate shipments of fruits and vegetables to the table that, if they remained stored longer , they could spoil.
“They bring us boxes of products that perhaps are no longer as fresh as those that people would find in a supermarket, but that are still perfect for preparing food in the next few days, ”he says.
Now agricultural producers from San Diego County are also arriving and there are chains of food stores that serve the table of the immigrant neighborhood .
Immigrant mothers take charge of la mesa
After a few months, the project overtook the founder and some of the immigrant mothers who benefited from this initiative solidarity decided to join .
Alma Alcantar, a Mexican family mother, agrees with her children every day the time that she will donate to the “Table of Justice and Hope”.
“Sometimes I come for three hours a day, sometimes four, depending on how I can take care of my house obligations without neglecting my family,” he explains.
Alcantar is part of a team of eight Mexican and Guatemalan mothers on whom the project now rests .
“We open the sacks of rice, beans or sugar, and we separate them into plastic bags by the pound, so that it touches more people ”, the woman explains.
A while after loading sacks of onion and potatoes, unpacking and ordering in lat two, the group of mothers sweat but reflect satisfaction.
“Nothing as nice as helping people” , says a Guatemalan mother, too shy to identify herself to Efe.
The volunteer immigrant mothers, “true heroines of the community,” according to Ramírez, were also called a few weeks ago to help in the vaccination process against the COVID – 19 at Sherman Community Center, because now They are well known in the neighborhood.