Dina Rovelo did not have a place where to remain one month ago when it came to the Mission of Rescue of Miami. Rovelo, a Honduran immigrant, had been living for one year in the repair workshop of cars of his husband, being employed at two work places with a minimum wage and breeding three children. "I wanted to support my husband and agreed with him in leaving my house to live in his repairs workshop. We think that that way we might save the money of the rent", he said. But the accounts were too high and his salary scarcely was reaching him to pay the food.

Rovelo and his children were living, as they will be able to imagine, in very uncomfortable conditions, without mentioning that they had to bear the slightly healthy smell of painting of car. Unfortunately his sacrifices did not yield fruit. His husband asked him to stem from his constant complaints. Without a place where to go and without any idea of what to do, found refuge in the Mission. There they offered him meal, clothes clean and a bed for her and for his children.

With the economy in crisis, the centers of community help and charitable organizations across the country are asking that now it helps for them. “We see that because of the mortgage sequestrations and so many persons who are losing his works, there is major need”, affirmed Donna Jean Matthews in charge of public relations of the Mission of Rescue of Miami. The number of persons that requests help there has increased 25 per cent but the donations have lowered at least 20 per cent.
Not lucrative organizations as that it helped to Dyne they depend on donations to pay special programs and even to give essential or basic things as nappies or money for a trip in bus for his participants. "They have provided to me everything what I have needed, from useful students for my children up to a Tylenol when I have a headache", pointed out Rovelo. But as a consequence of that the donations have diminished with the recession, these centers feel the impact. "We cannot do what we must do if we do not have the funds", tells Mathews.

The charitable contributions tend to reflect the current status of the economy and generally they increase in a 4.3 per cent average per year, but in years as this one the donations diminish in a 2.7 per cent average, according to the foundation GivingUSA. The organizations will not know exactly how badly it has been this year until they measure his donations in January. But many people already feel the hug and have begun to cut his budgets affecting programs as the rehabilitation of drug addicts and courses for prevention of the AIDS.

Typically the social centers depend on the generosity of the donors during the Christmas period to compensate the operation costs across the year. But the year 2009 might be difficult because less and less and less persons and companies open his pockets for these causes. Ironically it happens at the moment when the help is more required. Only in November 533.000 works got lost, according to the National Office of the Census. And the president of the Federal Reservation, Ben Bernanke, predicted that the mortgage executions this year will come for less 2 million 250 thousand hearths.

Since it came to the Mission of Rescue of Miami, Rovelo affirms that his life has turned. "I am taking classes of computer and receiving training to work, my daughters also are fine very much in the school, and are in the Picture of Honor". She adds that he glides to study to become a nurse some day because he excites him to help other persons. A quality that it discovered in the mission and a good way of making reciprocal the generosity that she and his family have received across the charity. "I never imagined that he was going to need to live in a refuge, but if it was not for the center probably it would be out in the street", he makes sure.

This is the reality of the times, persons of all the levels are losing everything what has cost them a work life and nevertheless they are grateful for the small things that they receive. In epochs of austerity it would be still wise to consider opening the heart and the portfolio for causes that can change the lives of some persons. That one if it is a good investment in the humanity.

(c) 2008 by Maria Helen Salinas.