Wiener Tafel celebrates its 22nd anniversary!
While the commitment has remained the same, the scale and scope of the activities of Wiener Tafel have changed considerably over the years. Wiener Tafel was founded by Martin Haiderer together with two students from the Social Academy with a barely existing budget. Thanks to the hard work and great support from various sectors of society, Wiener Tafel has been able to thrive and develop. Starting with one car in the year it was founded, now Wiener Tafel has four delivery vehicles picking up rescued food every day and redistributing it to charities. At the beginning, Wiener Tafel had neither an office nor a warehouse. 22 years later, in July 2021 Wiener Tafel achieved the big milestone of combining these two things in one place: a large TafelHaus with a warehouse and offices within the wholesale market in Vienna.
As a result of this steady growth, the ability to support people affected by poverty and the extent to rescue food has increased enormously. Wiener Tafel has been able to save around 7,000 tonnes of food for the past 22 years. While Wiener Tafel initially only supplied three charitable organisations, today there are around 90 to 120 charities that we provide with food. The support of Wiener Tafel now reaches about 16,000 to 19,000 people affected by poverty. All of this is made possible by the many hands and hearts of about 400 volunteers and supporters.
Alexandra Gruber, Managing Director of Wiener Tafel, is delighted about the great development on behalf of all employees: “I’ve been working for Wiener Tafel for around 10 years and I am just as proud to be part of the Tafel community as I was on the first day. In recent years we have achieved a great deal thanks to an outstanding team, Board of Directors and many committed volunteers, donors and cooperation partners. With every year that I work at Wiener Tafel, I see even more clearly what was achieved by the founding team around Martin Haiderer and the many volunteers in the early years of the association. It fills me with great respect, humbleness, and gratitude to be able to lead such a great association. We are very happy about the incredible development that our organisation has gone through its existence! At the same time, we hope that through our work we can continue to actively reduce poverty and food waste in Austria in the future.”
As an additional milestone in the development of Wiener Tafel, their new website will be launched on 29 September, also providing some information in English. The link to reach it, however, will remain the same: wienertafel.at
To read the original article on the anniversary in German, please click here.
