We are excited to announce that A Chance In Life has partnered with Equidad para la Infancia (Equity for Children) to produce a series of brief but powerful videos about life during the pandemic for the communities A Chance In Life supports across Latin America.

En Primera Persona (In First Person) is an audiovisual project that gives voice to current problems experienced by vulnerable families in Guatemala, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Mexico. 

The series of testimonials address the pandemic’s acute and pervasive effects on families living in overcrowded households where basic services are frequently lacking and parents are underemployed or unemployed. The videos also provide insight into community reactions by featuring community leaders and their intervention efforts. 
The En Primera Persona project shines a light on individual experiences and narratives, but speaks to the ways in which communities are working to counter the effects of COVID-19 to help families in need. Many of these communities are receiving support in addressing the pandemic’s effects from A Chance In Life’s Month of Meals campaign, which provided emergency food and health supplies.​

Videos have been posted to this page weekly. 
August 25, 2020 – Cúcuta, Colombia
María Alejandra lives as a single mother with her five children in the Navarro Wolf neighborhood. She is expecting another child, and with the risks of her high-risk pregnancy now compounded by the ongoing pandemic, has been unable to work for the past several months. Three of her children were attending school prior to the pandemic; without internet access, two of them have since stopped keeping up with classes. Only her daughter that attends Santa Rosa de Lima, a school with whom A Chance In Life has partnered to distribute emergency food relief, continues to study.
August 21, 2020 – Cuilapa, Guatemala
Edith lives with her three daughters, her two sisters, and her mother. Edith's neighborhood of Canton Utzumazate is quiet and beautiful, but doesn't have access to safe drinking water, electricity or paved roads. The families living there must buy safe water weekly to cook their food and practice safe hygiene. During this pandemic, Edith's family has followed the government's advice to wash their hands often, but it has proven to be an expensive task for their large family. Edith used to work as a housekeeper for a family, but lost her job because of the quarantine.
August 18, 2020 – Bogotá, Colombia
Leidy lives with her four children, her husband and her grandmother in Bogotá. Before the pandemic, Leidy use to work selling coffee ready to drink (“tintos”). Due to the pandemic she cannot got out to work neither her husband. Three of her four children used to attend the school at Hogar Buenaventura run by Congregation of Sister Little Apostles of Redemption. Now with schools’ closures country wide in Colombia, Leidy struggles to follow up with the schoolwork of her three children using one cellphone.
August 14, 2020 – Lima, Perú
Roxana lives in the Nuevo San Salvador human settlement of the San Juan de Lurigancho district of Lima, Peru. Her two youngest children, Brisa and Fabián, are attending virtual classes in the morning using Roxana’s cell phone. It has been difficult for both children to complete all of their work using just one device, something that has been stressful for the family. Roxana is very involved in her two youngest children’s education, and has overcome her initial unease with the virtual classes to try and support them as best she can. Her oldest daughter has been forced to postpone her own studies because of the pandemic.
August 11, 2020 - Buenaventura, Colombia
Lorena, Victor, and Gloria's daughters attend the John Paul I Girl’s Home run by our partners, Little Apostles of Redemption. The pandemic has brought economic problems, including unemployment, to all three families. None of the three families have internet access or the necessary tools for their daughters to complete their school work. Lorena, Victor, and Gloria are all very concerned about their daughters’ education. Uncertainty and lockdowns continue across Colombia after attempts to reopen the country led to increased cases and a possible collapse of cities’ healthcare systems. 
August 7, 2020 – Lima, Perú
Mirtha is a single mother who lives Lima, Peru with her young daughter. Both of them live in a rented room on a hill, in a settlement called Sacred Valley that is located in San Juan de Lurigancho District.
Mirtha’s daughter, Brigid, attends Fe y Alegría School No. 26 run by our partners, Congregation of Christian Brothers. Brigid attends virtual classes, in addition to TV classes three times a week, and homework from WhatsApp.
Watch the video to learn more about Mirtha's family.
August 4, 2020 - Bogotá, Colombia
​Angela's two daughters used to attend the Veracruz Girl’s Home boarding school run by the Congregation of Sisters Little Apostles of Redemption in Bogota. Angela lives with her two daughters, her sister and her sister’s six-month-old baby girl. The quarantine has made it very difficult for Angela to make ends meet for her household, and the family has found it very stressful to be enclosed inside the house together. For Angela's daughters, the most difficult aspects of the quarantine are the virtual classes and missing their teachers.
July 31, 2020 – Sumpango, Guatemala
Before COVID-19, Lidia's children and Aura's grandchildren attended Mother Anna Vitiello school, an institution run by our program partners, Congregation of Sisters Little Apostles of Redemption. Now that the school is temporarily closed, the children have returned home to the farm with their caregivers. Watch today's video to learn more about these two families. The pandemic has led to food shortages and increased prices in Guatemala, which is particularly concerning in a country that already had the highest rates of chronic malnutrition among children in Central and South America.
July 28, 2020 - Nuevo Horizonte, Peru
Watch this week's video to hear how Jaime and Yuri Aguilar Cordova and their children's teacher are working to keep their six children from falling behind in school without electricity or internet access.
To keep families like the Aguilar Cordovas safe and healthy during this pandemic, A Chance In Life has sent emergency food supplies through our partners, the Congregation of Christian Brothers, to over 900 children and their family members in Peru.
July 24, 2020 – Medellin, Colombia
Joana is a single mother of six, who works in Medellin’s informal economy as a street peddler. Darcy is the grandmother and guardian of her two grandchildren: Juan and José Gabriel. Juan is in second grade and José Gabriel Is in fourth grade. The two boys are her son’s children, who were left in Darcy’s care after their mother abandoned the family. Thankfully, both Joana and Darcy’s families have been doing well during this pandemic. No one in their neighborhood contracted COVID-19 and, through A Chance In Life's #MonthofMeals fund, they receive food supplies and other support from our program partners.
July 21, 2020 – Guatemala City
Gloria, her husband and children live in Gloria's parents' house in Guatemala City. Currently, only Gloria is able to work to provide food to her family. To learn more about how Gloria's family is dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, watch this week's video. Alongside most of Latin America, Guatemala is being hit hard by the effects of COVID-19.
Through our #MonthofMeals campaign, A Chance In Life has sent emergency food relief to over 1,000 children and family members like Gloria's in Guatemala.
July 17, 2020 – Lima, Peru
Mrs. Maritza Fuño Diaz lives with her two sons and one daughter in San Juan de Lurigancho, the most populous district in Lima, Peru. Watch this week's video to hear about how she is getting her family through the many challenges of the pandemic, including accessing distance learning with limited technology. 
A Chance In Life has sent emergency food supplies through our partners, the Congregation of Christian Brothers, to over 900 children and their family members in Peru. 
July 14, 2020 – Medellin, Colombia
Nancy and her two children live in a small house in Medellín, Colombia. Because of the pandemic and their resulting lockdowns, Nancy can't leave her home to go to work.
Watch the video to learn more about how Nancy and her family are dealing with these difficult changes in Medellín.
​A Chance In Life has sent urgent funds to offer food relief to families like Nancy's in Medellín through our partner, the Congregation of Little Sisters of Redemption, who run a home for girls.
July 10, 2020 – Cucuta, Colombia
Leidy and her three children live in a small house in a dangerous neighborhood in Cúcuta, Colombia. Amid the cacophony of her neighborhood, Leidy talks frankly about the challenges of losing her job and needing to keep her three daughters at home because of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Watch the video to learn more about how Leidy and her family are dealing with these difficult changes in Cúcuta.
A Chance In Life has sent urgent food relief to at-risk families like Leidy's in Cúcuta.
July 2, 2020 – Cochabamba, Bolivia
Marcela Suárez is a single mother living with her four children in a small rented room in the outskirts of Cochabamba. Before the pandemic, Marcela sold bottled water and apple juice on the streets of the local market. Watch this week's En Primera Persona (In First Person) video to learn more about how Marcela and her children are coping with COVID-19.
​A Chance In Life's relief efforts for families like Marcela's have focused on food relief, masks and cleaning supplies, and distributing posters with health and safety information about the COVID-19 pandemic.
 ​June 26, 2020 – Chihuahua, Mexico 
Señora Todos los Santos Dolores Villalobos Vigil lives in the communities of the Rarámuri or Tarahumara, a group of indigenous people of the Americas living in the state of Chihuahua in Mexico. Todos los Santos tells us about life in Tarahumara households during the pandemic. A Chance In Life supports El Voluntariado de Atención a Víctimas y Ofendidos del Delito in Chihuahua (The Volunteer Project of Attention to Offended Victims of Crime in Chihuahua) to serve the most vulnerable Tarahumara children and their families during the pandemic.
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