Triple-digit inflation, low wages, shrinking foreign aid, and deep cuts to food subsidies are causing millions of Venezuelans to struggle to put food on the table.

Children are already feeling the effects of the latest chapter of Venezuela’s protracted crisis.

Many go to bed early to skip dinner, faint from hunger at school, or fight over leftovers at the few soup kitchens still operating.

Priest Gilberto García runs one of those kitchens out of the community's church with help of donations and their own income.

“It is more difficult every day for people to have access to food of a certain quality, because people eat, but they mainly eat carbohydrates,” he said.

Alnilys Chirino goes with her children every Saturday to Father Castro’s church soup kitchen.

Her oldest son volunteers and helps in the Church.

On a recent day, the mother and son chat as they share an arepa in the soup kitchen.

The day before, all she could get for breakfast was a bag of bread and orange-flavored water.

That’s what they ate that morning while black beans slowly cooked in her kitchen to serve with rice for lunch.

Increasingly, she has had to look for help at least once a week to feed herself and her children.

“It’s not enough, it’s really not enough,” said Chirino, who doesn't have a formal job, but sells clothes to bring in money.

When her husband left them, their situation became dire.

She doesn’t qualify for the government’s “economic war bonus” given to public workers. What little money manages to earn, vanishes quickly and she sometimes has no answers when her children ask what they will eat tomorrow.

“They ask me, ‘What are we going eat tomorrow? How are you going to do it to buy things tomorrow? What are we going to eat?'" she said.

Lunch that day was rice and black beans.

For dinner: rice and stir-fried mortadella. Meat is rare at home.

Once a vital safety net, school lunch programs have also been scaled back.

The World Food Programme has cut the number of feeding days due to global funding shortages. Other food programs tied to the ruling party have grown more erratic, with many families saying they haven’t received their monthly food combos in months.

In the outskirts of Falcón's capital, Yamelis Ruiz clings to a bright blue bag from the WFP — one of the last visible signs of the aid her family used to receive.

Her daughter, who has a congenital brain condition, requires costly treatment.

"So, you also have to spend on medicine. Some days it was food or medicines. Either I buy one thing or the other,” Ruiz said.

Venezuela’s economic collapse, deepened by sanctions, subsidy cuts, and political crisis, continues to weigh heavily on its youngest citizens — and many fear the worst is yet to come.

AP Video shot by Juan Arraez