“The fun with information is here”, says beneficiary of Prato Cheio in the neighborhood of União

Community

Since October 2022, the space has offered a reading corner and board games for beneficiaries

Manaus (AM) – Books, board games and magazines. Gathered in a space in Prato Cheio in the neighborhood of União, in the Center-South Zone of Manaus, the materials are responsible for entertaining the beneficiaries of the place. Inaugurated in April 2022, the Prato Cheio unit has, since October last year, a leisure area.

Excited, the unit supervisor, Natasha Mille, celebrates the success of the initiative, which also includes the donation of books by people from the community itself.

“Over time, the community itself began to ask if they could also donate books. The idea of ​​creating this corner was precisely to make Prato Cheio a welcoming space, not just a place for people to come and eat”,

he said.

A frequent visitor to the place since its inauguration, Richard Lima, 58 years old, was enchanted by the action and, today, is one of the residents of the neighborhood who help to keep the place preserved.

“When I started to see the books stored here, I also took the initiative to help with donations. I brought my books, but when I go to my friends’ houses, I always pick up some that they don’t want anymore”,

said.

Retired and with some free time in the morning, Richard also found space an opportunity to help people even more. The most memorable story for him is when he came across a beneficiary who was interested in books but couldn’t read.

“Once, I saw a young man sitting down and asked him if he wanted to read. He looked at me and replied that he didn’t know. At that moment, I asked him to choose the book he wanted, because I was going to read it with him. This marked me a lot. So today I always nudge someone to pick up a book,”

completed the retiree.

Marlon Monteiro, 28, who also frequents Prato Cheio, is one of the people who has taken advantage of the space to catch up on reading. “Sometimes I like to read more, while we wait for the service, we pick it up (the book) and read it, it’s really cool. Before, we just sat and waited, now we wait with all this available”, he said.

Full plate

Prato Cheio is a social program whose target audience is people in vulnerable situations, including the unemployed, people with disabilities, informal workers and women who head families and who are in extreme poverty, poverty or low income. . The program has 44 units in operation, 18 in Manaus and 26 in the interior.

The program is divided into two distinct services: in popular restaurants, lunch is sold for the symbolic value of R$ 1, from Monday to Friday, from 11 am to 1 pm. In the popular kitchens, soup is free and each person served is entitled to a liter of food, of various flavors, from Monday to Saturday, also from 11 am to 1 pm.

From January to April of this year, more than one and a half million meals were served in the capital and inland in the kitchens and restaurants of Prato Cheio.