The voice he heard was familiar. She is a woman, whose fate was cruel with her. Mother of two primary school children, divorced and unemployed. How to ride them with a unique income of Social Solidarity Income of 250 euros? What to pay first? The rent, the PPC, the water, the expenses of the children in school, the food?
No matter how hard you try, they do not work out. The month is over, the money is gone, so is the food. Which foods, then? Spaghetti, rice, potatoes, everything that the stomach needs to deceive its hunger and not complain.
And when it all ends, despair comes. What will the children eat? How will they go to school without breakfast? That's the point of looking for a lifeline. You seek help, with all the dignity you have left. "We have two days to eat, do you have anything?" you ask.
"Yes we have. Come and get spaghetti, rice and oil, to cook for your children, before they come from school ", the saving answer.
"The problem is not solved, if we give a few spaghetti and rice, which we have from the offers of the world", says Vasso Nikolopoulou to thebest.gr, to land us in the harsh reality to add: "Unfortunately, as a society we have get used to poverty. "We are used to seeing people around us hungry."
Today, the Bright Star serves about 550 families of Patras, families next door who live their own Golgotha, of survival.
"There are families today living next to us in a miserable situation. "People who start on foot from Neos Dromos or Zarouchleika, to go to the dining room of the Metropolis or the Municipality, in the center of Patras, to get the food and to return on foot", explains Vasso Nikolopoulou.
Meals that as he explains, in thebest.gr, are not enough, since that of the Diocese is only at noon and that of the Municipality, only daily. And it's not just that. We have reached the end of October and the program with the free breakfast in schools has not started. What do these children eat? Nothing else, others a slice of bread, carefully wrapped in foil and others sharing breakfast with their classmates.
"Let us not rest on our laurels. The KEA, the meals, the Unemployment Fund, the Public Benefit Work, are not enough to live, but to pay the old debts that have been created by the crisis ", Vasso Nikolopoulou emphasizes and adds:
"Every day they call us to ask for a diaper, a bag of rice, a little oil. The situation is desperate. "