Thursday, July 21, 2011
Turkey, Australia, Guatemala—Food Banks in Different Countries: No. 1
2HJ Volunteer Coordinator Megumi Takahara attended the food bank training in the U.S. This time, she reports about food banks of different countries.
I attended the two-week food bank training in the U.S.!
I visited the U.S. that has more than 40 years of history of food banking for attending a training session. Between February 27 and March 13, I visited food banks in San Antonio, Texas; Phoenix, Arizona; San Francisco, CA.
I attended the food bank training session in Texas, and studied primarily volunteer activities and food pantry programs in both Arizona and California.
Report No. 1: Diverse food banks in the world
This trip started at the training session by Global Foodbanking Network (GFN) in San Antonio. GFN located in Chicago offers one-week training sessions every year to members of food banks and planning committees from all over the world.
Members of food banks from 22 countries got together in San Antonio to study American food banking and made presentations about the efforts in their countries.
Second Harvest Japan (2HJ) defines food banking as efforts to collect unmarketable food from food companies and redistribute them to charitable agencies that support those in need for free. But there are diverse food banks in the world and that surprised me.
I was interested particularly in the following three food banks.
Social Market in Turkey
In Turkey, the mayor of Beyoglu district of Istanbul, the largest city in Turkey, started a food bank. The mayor and Turkish Red Crescent Istiklal branch worked together to collect food, clothes, and other daily necessities from individual and corporate donors and distribute them among the poor. The efforts had evolved into an organization, Social Market, initiated by the Beyoglu mayor in 2010.
Social Market looks like a super market with its items displayed on shelves but all their products are free and available only to those in need who registered with the organization. For the registration, Social Market staffers visit and interview clients about their financial situations and the number of family members. Once registered, each household receives a red card.
This card has points according to the number of family members and their income. You could acquire items at a casher within your points. Since they don’t have advanced system like this even in the U.S., American food banks were also interested in it.
It was established in 2010 and now they have two other branches. Since it was initiated by the mayor, the word, food bank, is in their legal documents and donors can receive tax write-offs as well. All the donated items at Social Market has bar codes on them and their information automatically gets into its database.
Donors can receive tax write-offs simply by submitting receipts of the donations to the authority.
In most countries, food banks are run by the nonprofit sector. But in Turkey, food banks are part of the welfare policies for the poor.
Social Market Beyoglu: http://www.beyoglusosyalyardim.com/ (in Thurkish)
Large Food banks in Australia
The Australian food banks are probably the most similar to American counterparts among the participant food banks in terms of scale and activities. Food banks operate across Australia and provide food for more than 70,000 people every day through 2,900 social welfare agencies.
You would be aware how many social welfare agencies they collaborate with by comparing them with 2HJ, which had about 600 partner agencies and organizations in 2010. They handled 19 million kilos (19,000 tons) of food and groceries in 2010 and aim at 50 million kilos (50,000 tons) by 2013.
Every state has a food bank. They all operate as an independent non-profit organization and form a food bank network. The main reason for having the network is that they can collectively make a contract with large firms, rather than each food bank makes a contract with them.
At the same time, being independent enables them to cooperate with local governments and social welfare agencies in a way sensitive to local needs and to operate community-based activities. They also frequently exchange information about best practices between them.
At their national conference, policies at the national level are decided by the chairpersons of the participant states. Also, representatives from each food bank gather together to discuss policies and business plans a few times a year.
While most Australian food banks distribute donations to recipient agencies, in Queensland, which is the second largest state located in north-eastern Australia, there is a food bank that has their recipient agencies come to the food bank’s site to pick up donations.
I heard that it had taken years before recipient agencies finally started the pick-up system because securing trucks and drivers for the pick-up had been quite a burden on the agencies.
The recipient side agreed to cooperate in the pick-up after they had figured out that the pick-up would result in an overall advantage to them because Queensland food bank always had enormous amount of necessities for agencies such as vegetables and fruits. In other states donations are distributed by volunteers who drive their own cars or in cooperation with local governments.
Food Banks in Australia: http://www.foodbank.com.au/
Food banks Sell Foods in Guatemala
Several Guatemalan companies had meetings with GFN in 2001 to learn about food banking. In 2005, nine companies and a foundation established a food bank. The food bank started its full operations in the following year.
The Guatemalan food bank, now the only one there, is enlightening Guatemalans about food banking. It aims at the construction of the food bank network.
Since its establishment in 2005, the food bank has been providing 4,000 food bags every month, which adds up to food distribution to 190,000 people every year.
The distinctive feature of the Guatemalan food bank is that it sells all its food at 12 percent of each item’s retail price. Of course, food donors are aware that their donated food are sold. One of the reasons for selling donation items rather than giving them for free is that the food bank could earn its administrative fees.
There is another reason, however, which has something to do with Guatemalan culture. Once food are available free of charge, some Guatemalans are very likely to become so dependent upon free food that they lose the incentive to work.
So, the food bank has chosen to sell food to keep Guatemalans reminded to work to obtain what they need for themselves. I felt the Guatemalan food bank’s strong hope that people get out of poverty for themselves.
Banco de Alimentos de Guatemala: http://www.bag.org.gt/ (in Spanish)
Japanese Food Banks from Outside Perspectives
As described above, how a food bank operates varies greatly from country to country.
Compared with food banks in other countries, Japanese food banks have two unique features. The first feature lies in our message.
While foreign food banks lay stress on ending poverty, eradicating hunger, or saving people in poverty, Japanese food banks lay as much stress as on unnecessary waste too.
No other participant food banks send out a message that food loss should be decreased, like Japanese food banks.
For example, a Canadian food bank’s annual report had no article or data about food loss.
The second feature of Japanese food banks is found in their relationships with donor companies.
Most participant food banks appeal to potential donor companies actively for donations by making phone calls to them.
In the training session, we had a workshop in which participants were handed a list of questions and asked to respond to them.
One of the questions was “You have been making phone calls and sending emails to the person you know at a partner company several times to ask for donation, but received no response yet. What do you think you should do next?”
After participants expressed their opinions, we reached a consensus that we should contact somebody else who can contact the person.
2HJ has never appealed for donations as aggressively as this, so I felt a large gap between Japan and other countries.
The gap might have something to do with how to achieve a mission.
“Collect donation food and distribute them to those in need” sounds simple, but how to achieve it varies between countries.
The training sessions gave me an opportunity to review Japanese food banks objectively by learning about other food banks as well as American ones.
I am looking forward to seeing how Japanese food banks will develop from now on while they are adjusting themselves to respond to the needs of the age in cooperation with various companies and people across borders.
Such a development has already started since March 11.
You might also like this:
Food Pantry in the U.S.—Foodbanks in Different Countries: No. 2
Link to News story »
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