We, in Arrageois-Ternois, will be around 5000 to 6000 people beneficiaries. This summer we had 5,800 people registered, and 4,400 so far for this winter. We have 30 distribution centers. With the shared warehouse in Dainville, we also deliver to the 42 centers in the mining basin. There, there are around 14,000 to 15,000 beneficiaries.
Last year, it fell slightly, by 7%, because emergency measures were put in place: until 2023, there was a winter scale and a summer scale 30% lower. And last year, the winter campaign was carried out on the summer scale. So we had to refuse people. The food allocation went from 9 to 7 for single people, and from 6 to 4 for families of two people or more. The reduction in the number of meals was almost 40%. This year, we are staying on this same single scale. It was increased by approximately 10%, and we took into account single-parent families who have a scale 10% higher than “normal” families. We also take into account poorly housed people, that is to say people housed for free or with a low contribution.
Between inflation, salaries which have not increased everywhere… We would have had an explosion in the number of beneficiaries. This is why there were emergency measures. But the cry of alarm from the national president (in September 2023, Editor's note) meant that donors responded: individuals, businesses and the State. So this year, the scale has been increased, we take into account single-parent families and poorly housed people, to which we add a flat rate. These people did not fall into the scale because housing costs were non-existent or almost non-existent.
We go from minus 35 million to more than 22 million, things are much better. We are returning to a normal situation, with new rules, particularly for early childhood. Before, we took care of children from 0 to 18 months, and now we can take care of children from 0 to 36 months. That is to say that we add whole milk for those aged 12 to 36 months, and we add fresh fruit and yogurt for children. This is applied from this winter 2024 campaign. We will start to create small early childhood spaces a little away from the centers, to allow children to have fun and mothers to take some time off during distribution. Volunteers are trained in this activity.
If there were no Restos, how would this help arrive today? The State has not completely taken charge of it, even if we are helped by Europe and by the State on certain aspects. But overall, we cannot say that it is normal, 40 years later, that we remain on Coluche's good idea of using unsold goods and stocks and continuing to serve as many people.
