One and a half tons was the amount of food that the educational community of the Vilamoura International School managed to gather in this Christmas Campaign. The food collection provided support to the “Refeitório Social de Quarteira”, to the “Associação Existir” and to the Algarve Network for Families in Need.
In addition, the community also collected clothes and shoes for children, women and men, books and toys that were donated to the “Refeitório Social de Quarteira”. This institution serves 160 meals per day and provides hygiene services, food and clothing’s to individuals with social and financial problems.
The “Refeitório Social de Quarteira” also supports 60 families on a monthly basis with an essential groceries basket, as does the “Associação Existir”, who provides support to 20 families in the municipality of Loulé (with food, clothes, public baths and furniture). According to its director, Paulo Graça, this provision given by the Vilamoura International School, will "strengthen the support to their community in this particular situation of crisis with the pandemic."
Gunilla Zandin, a volunteer from Algarve Families in Need, stressed the importance of this social support, distributed mainly among families in the municipalities of Loulé and Faro, but also among some families in Albufeira, Carvoeiro, Lagoa and Lagos from the whole 200 families supported by the institution in all the Algarve.
The School raffles will take place on next Wednesday, January the 6th, and all its proceeds maintains as usual to fund the Big Hand Project (https://www.thebighand.org/), through which it sponsors five Mozambican children.
Stimulating values such as support and sharing are part of the educational project of the Vilamoura International School. The educational community has traditionally organized, since its origin, a solidarity fair at Christmas time, with which it supports some institutions of social solidarity. This year, although the fair did not take place due to the pandemic circumstances, the dream and the mission of bringing a little joy to those who are most in need, maintained. The Student Representative Council was the catalyst and the booster to the organization of the campaign.
