Receiving and Giving

"Most of us here are middle aged and depressed: we used to have everything but we lost it all." Dora's face is like a mask with very little expression on it. She speaks about her life as if it were somebody else's.

Dora and her husband made electrical materials and employed over a hundred people. The company they had started as a little corner shop grew into something much larger. In 2000 however, the factory and their marriage began to totter: imports were too cheap, loans too expensive. They downsized their payroll, but by 2001 recession in Argentina was so acute and the market had shrunk so severely that they had to close their factory.

Dora and her husband separated. She now lives in their apartment, the sole possession they could save from their creditors. She lives with her sons: Hernan, age 25 who just graduated as a Mathematician and teaches part time, and Mariano, age 22 who is a Gymnastics student, and her retired mother. As she has no income, Dora contacted the Maccabi JCC and enrolled in the JDC food voucher program, which provides families with approximately $41 per month in food vouchers. After a while she also requested help from JDC to pay her bills through the Bayit Housing Program and she has asked for medicines provided by the JDC-sponsored Central Community Pharmacy, for her ailing mother.

Dora also enrolled in one of the many workshops at the Maccabi JCC. "We make rag dolls," she says, "and it keeps my mind from constantly thinking about my problems. The toys we make will be given to poor kids. I like that we are helping to make a little difference. Many people in the Jewish community are impoverished; we are hurting. I see it at my JCC where more and more people are coming to ask for help."