Solar panels for our refugee food bank

You haven’t heard from us for quite a while… we were busy trying to keep our heads above water. Current trends are putting pressure on those left standing, but we are rowing against the current.

All these months, we kept running the food bank in Chisinau, driving food boxes to Odessa, organizing an intense wave of vocational courses and supporting Ukrainian food entrepreneurs.

Since the conflict broke out in our region we’ve served about 45 thousand families. Our food bank has been distributing over 20k lbs of food a week for 2 years. Most of it, fresh produce from local farmers. The summer and fall were wonderful. In the winter the diversity is certainly limited to several types for storable fruits and veggies as well as canned and pickled stuff or dried fruits. Sometimes we also sprinkle in much appreciated dairy and a few basic staple foods.

We’re quite proud we’ve been able to make this work with „zero waste”. All the recipients bring their own bags and boxes, so we’ve prevented tons and tons of plastic and cardboard trash.

Watch interviews with regular food bank visitors here: https://fb.watch/qt_DvB2XFT/

The interest and commitment of people and organizations worldwide to support Ukraine crisis have been gradually fading. Some got burned out, others shifted their attention to other more recent problems in the world… Most refugee support centers here in Moldova have closed or drastically scaled down. We’ve been getting countless messages and calls from people, sharing concerns and asking if we’re also going to disappear.

Not yet… Especially now that we are THE ONLY food bank in Moldova that still provides weekly food supplies at scale. In order to keep up the volume of food for 2000 families per week we have to operate in a leaner form now. Starting next week, we’re giving up the central deposit and office in the center of Chisinau and shifting to distributing the same amount of food in public places across the city as we did at the very beginning of the crisis.

Another rewarding branch of activity we have firmly established in the last half year are vocational culinary courses. Many Ukrainains are slowly taking roots here in Moldova, looking for jobs or re-skilling opportunities. From basics of culinary arts, over pastry to the charming raft of barista, we have trained 75 people so far in intense 2 month courses. Some of them have found jobs or started their own small scale production in our commercial shared kitchen.

And next month we’re launching the next vocational program for women – to learn basics of construction and repairs. This profession is already quite in demand, and it will be so much more, when the mess is over, and people need to go back to rebuild their homes, factories and hospitals.

This is our gradual transition to offering „fishing rods” instead of “fish”, because as much as we love to provide fresh local food to those in need, we know this cannot last forever.

Thank you GlobalGiving and all our individual donors for being a strong wind in our sales since 2 years.

Links:

• https://fb.watch/qt-eSGNY6G/
• our work to support refugees in Southern Ukraine
• longest standing food bank for refugees in Moldova

You’ll have to forgive me, I’m usually late writing these reports every few months, mostly because I have a feeling the Ukraine thing just isn’t relevant to people outside this region anymore. There’s also the fact that we average only a few donations per month via GlobalGiving since New Year’s, and I wouldn’t be surprised if these links end up in spam…

Anyway, for those who are curious, we are still extremely busy with our core operation, food security. We manage the longest-running food bank in the city that serves over 2,000 families per week, we send a truck to visit 1-2 rural communities per week, and since February, a group of Ukrainian diaspora invited us to make weekly trips to Odesa and beyond. We even brought food to Kherson before the flood.

While most other refugee initiatives have long closed down, we’re still here, and we’re still trying, even though none of us have humanitarian backgrounds.

Our staying power is mostly because we approach the problem differently.

a) We provide the same food we feed our own families, and these days that means strawberries and salad greens and tomatoes and cucumbers. Fresh food, not sacks of rice and boxes of anonymous meat spread. It’s so much more work, to procure, pack and transport, but it pays off when you see their faces.

b) We support the local economy by buying over 90% of our fruits, vegetables and grains direct from Moldovan farmers and processors.

c) Over half our team are Ukrainians, we put them to work the first week, and many have said it’s important to have something stable in their life like packing at our food bank once a week, where they can socialize and feel useful.

d) We aim for more holistic relationships with our clients, by organizing cooking courses for all ages, from kids to retired, by teaching hard skills like construction basics or how to open and manage a private daycare. We’re working with a group of Ukrainian food entrepreneurs to open a cooperative café/catering business. And we drive around the country in our old hippie bus, organizing camps to integrate Ukrainian and Moldovan kids.

The main idea is we’re doing what we can in our small corner of Moldova, even though it’s small scale, low budget and amateur.

Thank you GlobalGiving and all our individual donors for helping us establish a strong foundation last year.

Links:

• Our hippie bus in action
• Keeping kids busy
• Running around Moldova