On 19 October 2021, FEBA participated to the FEAD Community Annual Conference taking place in Brussels and online. Together with FEBA team, FEBA members from Italy, Malta, Spain and Slovenia participated in Brussels and other FEBA members joined online. The conference had as main objectives to take stock of the role and activities of the FEAD Community, reflecting on the lessons learnt from the COVID-19 related crisis, its long-term impacts and the way forward. Moreover, the conference addressed how the accompanying measures can contribute to reaching the specific objective od the ESF+. FEBA Secretary General Angela Frigo made an introduction intervention at the beginning of the conference bringing the voice of FEBA members benefiting from FEAD and the key role the FEAD Community played in the transition period 2020-2021.
Moreover, FEBA also moderated a World Café in a working group discussion on the role of stakeholders, including end recipients experiencing poverty and social exclusion, be implicated in the design of the ESF+ programme in line with the European code of conduct on partnership. FEBA Secretary General reported then the main outcomes in a plenary session.
In the afternoon, two members of the FEBA Board of Directors were invited to present in the panel “the provision of food and material assistance in the FEAD programme”. Marco Lucchini, Secretary General of Fondazione Banco Alimentare Onlus and FEBA Board Member presented the key results of the report FEBA published on the occasion of the FEAD Annual Conference 2021 “FEAD and the European Food Banks Federation – 2020 Implementation Report” (read the article here). Moreover, Pedro Castaños, Responsible of International Relations in the Federación Española de Bancos de Alimentos (FESBAL) and FEBA Board Member, made a presentation on the FEAD (2014-2020) in Spain speaking about the past, the present and the future for Spain.
At the end of the conference, representatives from the European Commission made a presentation on the accompanying measures under ESF+ supporting the social inclusion of the most deprived, alongside food or basic material assistance and on the future of FEAD inside the ESF+ and the importance of stakeholders’ involvement to structure a dialogue between the European commission, Managing Authories and partner organisations for the benefit of the most deprived in Europe.
