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Cecilia Pilar began by presenting the situation that many people are currently experiencing. The figures are worrying, she said, because we know that every nine seconds a person dies of hunger. In total, more than three and a half million people die every year.
All this information clashes with the figures on wealth, which continues to increase. However, Pilar emphasized in her presentation that this increase is not reflected equally in all countries.
The conditions in which millions of people live cannot be reduced to numbers, the president said, but must be assumed by all as a common responsibility.
Dario Bossi, Cambonian missionary
Several countries of the world "experience many neocolonial relationships", pointed out the Cambonian missionary, Dario Bossi, in his intervention. In fact, the world powers have in fertile but economically poor lands, monstrous projects that destroy the land, causing deaths and crimes against people.
Bossi explained the difficulty to confront these projects, because if the communities refuse, the powers and companies undertake campaigns of persecution to pressure the natives of the places. But not everything is negative, as the missionary wanted to emphasize. The communities also try to organize and unite to fight against these aggressions.
Outside help is needed and Dario stressed the importance of the Church listening to the people and taking the side of the most threatened, putting its institutional strength at their service.
Virginia Alfaro, lay missionary in Angola
Virginia Alfaro is a lay missionary in Angola. There she coordinates a community intervention program called "Happy Childhood". This project promotes access to basic rights for women and children.
Through the intervention program, Alfaro helps to "create opportunities", improving the education of the children and establishing a quality education. During her intervention, the missionary emphasized that most of the children do not have access to this education. In fact, only 11 % of the children receive a preschool education, which is as expensive as a private university.
On the other hand, Virginia explained, most teenage girls drop out of the educational system because they become pregnant. The importance of fighting this can be expressed in numbers and so did Alfaro. She pointed out that girls who finish primary education can produce between 10 and 20 % more resources to support themselves, and if they finish secondary education, they can produce up to 25 % more.
In addition to education, the missionaries as Virginia fight for health and welfare. In his presentation, Alfaro emphasized that 94 % of the world's malaria deaths occur in Africa, with malaria being the leading cause of death among children and pregnant women in Angola.
For pregnant women, the risk of illness is compounded by the precariousness of the "paternity drain". Many men abandon the mothers of their children because there is no link between male identity and the father figure, so women, intimately linked to their motherhood, must fight for their rights in a fragmented society.
The collaboration of all
The speakers at the press conference insisted several times on the need to understand that changing the situations of the most vulnerable is everyone's responsibility. They encouraged growing awareness and participation in the projects that are being implemented worldwide to fight inequality.
