On 6 January 2022, the European Commission published the 2021 FEAD Network Case Study Catalogue. By means of 21 concrete examples, the report demonstrates how the Fund for the European Aid to the Most Deprived (FEAD) is supporting and protecting European citizens facing poverty and deprivation.
Two of the case studies feature FEBA Members in France and Lithuania (pag. 10 and 38 respectively) and, therefore, are of special interest.
Banques Alimentaires in France have been involved in the redistribution of food parcels to students in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region between March 2020 and December 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic and concomitant lockdowns caused levels of food insecurity in France to rise. While existing FEAD end recipients increasingly struggled to afford regular meals, new societal groups, such as students, were suddenly in need of assistance. In order to improve their precarious situation, the most disadvantaged students attending third-level educational institutions received food packages worth around 26€ each week. In October 2020, the project was scaled up to generally include young people between 15 and 30 years. Each department of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region identified a main Food Bank contact in charge of the redistribution of nearly 52,000 parcels in total. Cooperation between local actors and effective organisation schemes were key ingredients for the success of the project, which was praised by civil society and triggered a wave of volunteer engagement, for instance as regards food packaging and transportation. This initiative was run with food products worth 1,350 million €, of which half were supplied by Food Banks of the region, stemming from different sources and including FEAD products and food derived through the National Food Collection as well as surplus food recovered from supermarkets.
Between 2018 and 2020, the provision of food assistance and accompanying measures to FEAD end recipients contributed to the prevention of food insecurity and aimed to foster the integration of vulnerable citizens into society in Lithuania. Among other organisations, Maisto bankas, FEBA Member in Lithuania, played an important role in helping the target group of this FEAD-supported initiative, people with little or no income, to get access to nutritious food.
Read the full Catalogue here.
