A woman serves food at a soup kitchen which feeds at least 200 people.
The giant pots simmering in Dagna Aiva's kitchen explain the long line of people outside her house located in a gritty district of southern Buenos Aires, where Argentina's economic crisis is hitting locals hard.
Aiva feeds 200 people a day from those steaming pots in Villa 21-24, the urban coalface of Argentina's economic crisis.
For hard-bitten locals on its tough streets, talk of stock markets and the strength of the safe-haven dollar is a risible middle-class obsession -- here the priority is simply putting food on the table.
"I don't have any dollars, what can they do for me? There are other basic needs I have to find a solution for," says Aiva.
'Zero poverty'
Avia's home houses the local social center called "Casa Usina de Suena," which translates as "Dream Factory" -- a space that includes a picnic area and provides academic support for children.
"Here, it's full of people who work a lot, it's sad to see that they cannot have enough to eat," said Avia, gazing out at the polluted Riachuelo river, which borders the barrio.
Argentina -- South America's second-largest economy and a land of contradictions with a widening gap between rich and poor -- is also one of the continent's three countries where hunger has increased in 2018, alongside Venezuela and Guatemala.
More meals
Former health minister Daniel Gollan has highlighted one of the crisis' most troubling statistics, five million children and adolescents plunged into a "critical food situation."
Trade unions and social organizations, as well as the Catholic Church and opposition parties, have demanded the government declare a "food emergency."
That would allow more funds to be allocated to manage an increasingly desperate situation.
Agence France-Presse