In 2019, Food Banks distributed 145 million kilos of food to 1.1 million vulnerable people in Spain.
This Tuesday, April 7, the King and Queen held a video conference with the heads of the Federación Española de Bancos de Alimentos (FESBAL), who conveyed to the monarchs their concern about the current situation caused by COVID-19 and its consequences, because according to their estimates, up to 1.5 million people could depend on Food Banks for food in the near future.
The FESBAL management team conveyed to the monarchs that the current coronavirus crisis and the first official data on people who have entered ERTES or lost their jobs in March, and which will probably increase in April, raise fear that a large number of people will fall into severe poverty.
Therefore, they pointed out that those people will become recipients of food aid managed by the Food Banks. The organization estimates that at least 1.5 million people are likely to be dependent on the Food Banks for food.
FESBAL recalls that it has already set up a crisis committee to respond to COVID-19 and has managed to get the 54 Food Banks of the Federation and their teams of volunteers, despite the fact that some of them are among the population at risk due to their age, to establish a minimum service so that no one is left without food.
In addition, new young volunteers and some units of the Armed Forces (including the Royal Guard) have replaced volunteers who have been unable to keep up with the activity. Given the impossibility of making face-to-face donations as a result of the State of Alarm, digital campaigns have been launched to solicit help from individuals and also from companies and institutions.
Thus, for example, the Reina Sofía Foundation has made an extra donation of 265,000 litres of milk; “la Caixa” Foundation and CaixaBank have launched the campaign “No home without food” for online donations; the Gallo Group donated a one-day production of pasta (150,000 kilos); Danone donated more than 3 million units of dairy products; Findus Spain donated more than 80 tonnes of food; Arroz SOS donated 100.000 €; Kellogg Spain donated 84,000 kilos of breakfast cereals; Kellog Europe donated 20,000 €; Pharmex Laboratories donated 56,383 cans of infant milk; the Cepsa Foundation donated 200,000 € to buy food (100,000 € for Madrid); McDonald’s donated more than 25 tons of products and Deoleo donated 10,000 litres of oil, among others.
In addition, campaigns have been carried out with employees of companies such as Fundación Telefónica, Metrovacesa (which will double the donations from its employees), the cook José Andrés (food cooked in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia), Ali Baba (2.5 million emails asking for donations), Rastreator (campaign for volunteers), the Bullfighting Association (donations from members and employers) or TGinfluencer (donation and volunteer campaign).
In 2019, the Food Banks distributed a total of 145 million kilos of food to 1.1 million vulnerable people, through 7,216 local charitable organizations.
The president of FESBAL, Juan Vicente Peral (from Alicante), the treasurer Gregorio Pérez Calvo (from Salamanca) and the director Miguel Fernández Rodríguez (from Madrid) participated in this meeting, as detailed by the Royal House.
