The story of Antonia Soares Mota, a contractor of the World Food Program (WFP) Centre of Excellence against Hunger, can portray several projects developed by the Centre. Daughter of a family of smallholder farmers in a village of the municipality of Novo Oriente, in the state Ceará, in the Northeast region of Brazil, she is the oldest of eight siblings. While her mother was in the fields, she took care of the house and of her younger siblings. Perhaps, this explains the fact that Antonia treats everyone at the Centre as if they were her children. She is the one who offers a hot tea to a colleague when she sees the person has a cold, brings a snack to a pregnant colleague and even brings the scallions she produces for her own consumption and to her colleagues.
Antonia came to Brasilia in 1993, when she was 25 years old, to help her family with an extra income. As soon as she arrived, she was a maid for five years. She then worked for general service companies and was outsourced to other institutions. She has been to the a newspaper in Brasilia and the Italian Embassy, for example. And in 2012 she started working at the WFP Centre of Excellence.
“I really enjoy working here. It’s a place where people value my job, where I feel recognized. I am the one who opens the office every morning and everybody here trusts me in doing it”, she celebrates.
Her parents and siblings, in the Northeast region, continue to work in the ranch, growing corn, beans, rice, cassava, peanuts and cotton. She says that at the time she lived there, the currency circulating in her community was based on exchanges. To ensure the nutritional security of the family, her father offered his services by hoeing and fencing and received back chickens, sheep, cheese, etc.
Antonia’s husband, Cainan, is a freelance blacksmith and together they have three children. The oldest, Rafael, studied all his life in a public school and is currently studying Library Science at the University of Brasilia, one of the universities which more receives applications in the Country. He is also an instructor to other students in some courses at the University and is an intern at the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court. Antonia´s other two children are twins. Gabriel and Laura are in their first year of Secondary School, and they intend to be military staff. All three children benefited from the National School Feeding Program (PNAE).
“For my children, I harp in the same string: they have to study, they have to be successful in what they want and they have to do it by themselves. Because in the job market, who is qualified gets the job, who is not doesn´t”, she emphasizes.
Antonia and her children prove how schooling and school feeding can transform a family’s life. Being the daughter of family farmers who plant cotton intercropped with other crops, Antonia’s family shows the importance of other project developed by the Centre, called Beyond Cotton, which aims at improving the income and food and nutritional security of smallholder farmers.