WE COLLECT FOOD. WE GIVE BACK
Our help is very tangible. It can be weighed and measured – it takes the form of kilograms of food that make their way to the tables of people in need. Our aid has another aspect, too – it restores people’s dignity and it allows them to live their lives with peace of mind at least for a fleeting moment.
Every month we procure hundreds of tonnes of food. Our job is to find the food, and subsequently collect it from food manufacturers, farmers, and stores. Once transported to our storehouse, the food items need to weighed, sorted, and stored away, and then shared with people afterwards.
In Warsaw and its neighbouring areas alone, there are tens of thousands of poor people who receive food from our Food Bank.
Thanks to our donors and us, they are able to prepare meals for several days.
WHAT KIND OF CAMPAIGNS DO WE CARRY OUT?
One campaign that we carry out every day, all year long, is simply handing out food to people who have scarce access to it.
We also organise the Holiday Food Collection Event in stores, with thousands of volunteers collecting food received from Poles in specially-prepared baskets. We carry out the “Holidays with Dignity” and “Package for Easter” programmes, thanks to which we are able to provide food to the needy just in time for the winter or spring holidays.
Given that food is our mission, we also educate Poles on how to avoid wasting it. We carry out:
- workshops for those we help
- school lessons
- training courses for businesses
- local community events, e.g. for World Food Day.
THE HISTORY OF FOOD BANKS
The first Food Banks appeared at the end of the 1960s in the USA.
In 1967 John van Hendel, an entrepreneur and philanthropist, founded the first Food Bank in Phoenix, Arizona. Hengel, volunteering with one of the food aid facilities for those in need, noted that many foodstuffs went to waste instead to the tables of people who needed them. He decided to found an organisation whose aim would be to collect surplus foodstuffs and hand them out to people in need.
Not long after, more food banks started popping up.
The idea reached Europe in the 1980s.
The American organisation model inspired Europe’s first Food Bank, founded in 1984 in France. Its name was “Banque Alimentaire”. The idea of Food Banks quickly spread onto other countries of Europe.
The first Polish Food Bank was founded in 1993, at the initiative of Jacek Kuroń.
At the beginning of the 1990s, Poland was navigating through a difficult period of social and economic transformation. Among the many problems faced by the country’s society were poverty and the lack of food. As a response to this situation, a group of committed people decided to create an organisation whose aim was to tackle the paradox of the situation: on the one hand, large quantities of food went to waste, and, on the other, there were people who could not afford any. At the initiative of Jacek Kuroń, the first “SOS Food Bank” was founded in Warsaw as part of the “Pomoc Społeczna SOS” (SOS Social Assistance) Foundation.
As the years passed, the SOS Food Bank in Warsaw kept developing. Despite many changes, though, one thing was a constant – our commitment and willingness to help people in need.
Today, the Food Bank is a vibrant and active organisation – it encompasses 860 square meters of storage space, refrigerators, freezers, our own delivery cars and trucks, over a dozen personnel, as well as thousands of volunteers and donors. It’s also the billions of kilograms of foodstuffs which, instead of going to waste, made their way to the tables of those in need.
We are a founding member of the Federation of Polish Food Banks.
