The European Food Banks Federation (FEBA) keeps supporting its Associate Member in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Food Banks Federation (UFBF).
The UFBF operates as a national Federation with solid governance that coordinates the food distribution to the current Food Bank in Kyiv and the new one in Lviv. Given the dramatic context and the enormous number of displaced people needing food and non-food support, the UFBF started to purchase food through the national association of Producers in Ukraine, which acts as a network of several producers across the country.
This operation strategy allows the UFBF to sustain the local economy while receiving reasonably priced products.
Today, the UFBF supports about 30 charitable organisations, including the Olena Zelenska Foundation and Marsh Zhinok (The Women's March), in 12 out of 25 Ukrainian regions: Kyiv, Lviv, Zhytomyr, Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Dnipro, Mykolaiv, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.
The organisations, selected by the UFBF, have been operating in the area for years with a particular focus on the most vulnerable. In particular, the UFBF assists orphans, single mothers, disabled people, and older people.
For the past months, including during the harsh winter months, the UFBF assembled and delivered food kits to charities and will continue for the entire year of 2023. Each kit contains 25 essential food products (about 16 kilograms), such as milk, flour, grains, fish, meats, rice, sugar, and oil.
Seasonal products were added during the festive season.
Each food kit costs about 35 euros and sustains three people for two weeks, guaranteeing them a nutritional and balanced diet according to national standards relating to portions and quality.
FEBA President, Jacques Vandenschrik, takes the chance of this report to highlight the imprtance of our activities and thanks for the support.
"2022 has been a year of big challenges. Since World War II, Europe has never experienced such a tragedy, and Food Banks have never faced such an immediate and important increase in food assistance. The generosity of private and corporate donors from every corner of the World was encouraging. It allowed FEBA to cope with the challenge and assist its members in these difficult times."
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At the outbreak of war, it was clear that FEBA needed to respond in a way that it had never done before; therefore, the campaign #AllTogether4Ukraine was launched to support Food Banks helping the people of Ukraine. In addition to all the displaced people in Ukraine, an initial mass exodus of refugees put massive pressure on the neighbouring countries.
FEBA targeted its first wave of interventions on supporting its Members in Ukraine, Moldova, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. FEBA called partners and supporters to donate food and economic resources to the benefit of local Members who were tirelessly assisting people. On the same page, the infrastructures of FEBA Members were insufficient to cope with this exceptional situation; hence, FEBA activated itself to reinforce the logistic of these organizations to let them focus on delivering food where it is most needed.
A first visit to Romania, Moldova, Poland and Ukraine was organised in April 2022 in order to assess the needs and the situation. At the same time, FEBA turned its attention to specific parts of Ukraine and appointed a dedicated Ukrainian Project Manager who had left the country with her small child. She has acted as an essential connection to her motherland. In addition, FEBA Members from across Europe (such as Estonia, France, Greece, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania) proudly sent food to Ukraine and neighbouring countries. In this framework, a special mention must go to Moldova, where food convoys were sent across to Odessa while facing a very uncertain future as Russia tried to close off the coastline. In this scenario, FEBA’s goal was to ensure the operational activities, reinforcing the logistics while providing food.
At the end of August 2022 FEBA organised a second visit to Ukraine (Kyiv and Lviv) in order to monitoring the situation and developing a plan of increased support beyond the harsh winter.
A twin-track approach was planned: supporting the Ukrainian Member by distributing food to where it is most needed and strengthening the Food Bank capacity.
In the meantime, FEBA assessed the needs of its network, focusing its attention on the countries who suffered most by the consequences of the war and released the report “Assessment of FEBA Members’ Activities” which describes the situation of FEBA Members in period July 2021 to June 2022. In particular, it focuses on the impact of external factors such as the Ukraine crisis, inflation growth, increase of food prices, food availability, and climate change.
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The European Food Banks Federation (FEBA) launched the campaign #AllTogether4Ukraine on the 1 March 2022 aimed to support Food Banks that are helping the people of Ukraine, in particular FEBA Members in Ukraine, Moldova, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia.
Since then, FEBA has strengthened the daily dialogue with its membership and is mainly supporting members as follows:
An overwhelming response has been registered to our campaign by mobilizing the solidarity of the many FEBA Members as well as food business operators as thousands of tonnes of food have been delivered to help the Ukrainians in Ukraine and refugees in the surrounding countries. As far as Ukraine is concerned, food has been provided directly to the Kyiv City Charity Foundation “Food Bank” in Kyiv as well to other logistic centres secured by local authorities or the private sector in L'viv and Chernivtsi.
In addition, FEBA Members in Moldova (Banca de Alimente Moldova), Poland (Federacja Polskich Banków Zywnosci), Romania (Federatia Bancilor pentru Alimente din România), and Slovakia (Potravinová Banka Slovenska) were not sufficiently equipped to handle the huge quantities of food received for refugees in their own countries but also for supply in Ukraine. For this reason, FEBA provided financial support to reinforce the infrastructure and logistics of Food Banks in these countries.
Summarising the aspects outlined above, the war in Ukraine is having devastating impacts on the wellbeing of Ukrainian people but also poses challenges to neighbouring countries, and sparked cascading effects on food production and availability in the EU/Europe and beyond. Hence, this multifaceted crisis with the scale and scope of its immediate and long-term consequences being determined by the length of the war threatens to impact food security levels affecting the most vulnerable groups.
The donations received through this Project will contribute to the campaign #Alltogether4Ukraine. Thank you for your support!
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