Cuenca Soup Kitchen is one of our favorite charities in Ecuador. We have written about them before in our blog, and encourage others to help their main mission of providing food, clothing, and other necessities to Ecuadorians and refugees in need. They are currently serving 175 families, but there are 300 more on the waiting list in this community. I would personally like to encourage you to help them out, either with a year-end donation, or better yet, a monthly donation to help them plan for their ongoing requirements.

This year they added a special Christmas (aka Angel Tree) program, which provides each of the 183 children of those 175 families with a Christmas gift from their wish list. There were stuffed animals, giraffes, skate boards, Barbie dolls, clothes and even a bed on the wish list. The families also received two full chickens, a dozen eggs, plus a basket of other food to help feed them through the holidays. One little girl was so excited with her gift that she tumbled down the steps, but the tears quickly turned to joy when she unwrapped her doll.

Evelyn and I also contributed a holiday portrait of each of the children. We attended both days of the primary event which distributed a food basket, chicken, eggs, lunch to the families and Christmas gifts to the children. We spent the last few days editing the images, and the final prints will be distributed to each parent the first week of January, 2022.

Above, you can see a small sampling of the children, as they posed for their Christmas portrait.

Cuenca Soup Kitchen in partnership with Hearts of Gold staff kept everything flowing smoothly on both days. Each family was given an appointment time, and the flow through the building was organized to keep people as separated as possible, as part of the COVID precautions. Masks were required for everyone, except when posing for photos, or when the staff was actively eating (during the scheduled breaks in families arriving).

This was a massive undertaking. There were 22 staff on hand for the first day, plus 23 for the second day of the event. In addition, behind the scenes were another 15 people baking treats for both clients and staff. The above images shows only a few of the people working to bring this entire event together. The lower-right shows the small studio that was assembled, to provide portraits of the children and yes, that is Burt behind the camera.

This couldn’t have happened without the donations from the community, or from the large number of tireless staff that worked the event. When there were brief breaks in the portrait sessions, a few of the staff also sat to have their portraits also taken.