This is an important moment in the year for food banks: their major annual collection takes place from Friday to Sunday, throughout France. Around a hundred partner supermarkets will welcome the volunteers with orange vests in the Somme. Last year, in the department, more than 60 tonnes of food were collected for the benefit of partner associations and CCAS.
The Somme food bank is looking in particular for bottles of oil, canned vegetables and fruit, ready-made meals, milk, canned meat or fish, starchy foods and dried vegetables, baby products and products hygiene. Attention, no fresh produce. These foodstuffs will be collected directly by volunteers from the different organizations, before being redistributed locally. To help you find a collection point near you, France Bleu Picardie has created a map of stores participating in the operation.
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While many French people are facing economic difficulties, the food bank is hoping for a surge of mobilization. “The context is not great, precariousness and poverty are not decreasing, quite the contrary”underlines Gilles L'hermite, its president in the Somme. “Our partners include among their beneficiaries more and more single-parent families, single mothers with young children, students, the newly poor, people who have a job, who are no longer able to make ends meet and who are forced to appeal for food aid. We know this context. What we also see is that even when people are in difficulty, they are no less generous. And that’s important. The most generous people are not necessarily the wealthiest.”
Food banks have been around for 40 years. In the department, the organization supports around 10,000 people via partner associations and can count on its seven employees and thirty volunteers. In the hope of finding new arms, the 80 food bank recently opened its doors to the public.
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