A Mexican-inspired pie, chicken parmigiana and a pasta sauce passed down from Claudia’s mother are some of the recipes Claudia, Mario and two of their children Natalia and Orlando have been cooking together for ChildFund’s 2020 Challenge this October.
In addition to being able to have some fun and share some scrumptious meals together as a family, Claudia says the 2020 Challenge is an opportunity to teach her children important values such as kindness and charity.
“The Challenge is a way to teach my children to go beyond themselves, particularly in times like now when there’s a level of great challenge with the pandemic,” she says.
“I wanted to give my children the opportunity to be involved because they’ve shown interest before with other things I’ve done, where I’ve shown kindness or commitment to other things than myself.”
An opportunity to give back
Claudia’s commitment to giving back goes back to her roots: she grew up in a developing community in Peru and knows the positive difference charity and education can make in people’s lives.
“Although extreme poverty didn’t affect us directly when we were growing up, I was well aware of it,” she says. “In my family we had limitations and things that we had to go without.
“One of the key things that my parents and my family always instilled in us was a level of knowledge and education. We may not have had many material things but there was always the opportunity for us to become learned in certain areas; there was always an opportunity to go for it, rather than shy away from things.
