The social entities of the Canary Islands have begun to suffer cuts in the arrival of food from the European Aid Fund for the Most Needy (FEAD). This program, co-financed 15 percent by the Government of Spain, offers food, clothing, footwear and other essential products for personal use for people living in poverty and at risk of social exclusion.
Only last year, the Food Bank of Tenerife stopped receiving 247 tons of food for a snip of 18 percent compared to 2019. Even so, its workers and volunteers managed to distribute 2,271,003 kilos among the applicants, 900 tons more in interannual terms, from private or business donations.
Currently, the Bank serves 32,000 people, 40% more than last year. Its president, Hernan Cerón, asks the institutions for help because “the food that enters through one door leaves through the other, we do not store. The need is very great.” In addition, he points out that the profile of the beneficiaries has changed: “We are no longer talking about poor people who have always been poor. We are talking about people who have lost their jobs, who are in ERTE and who belong to the middle class.”
For small NGOs such as the Kairós Association of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the cuts are already translating into a shortage of basic products such as milk, oil, rice or alluvium. Its leader, Benjamín Barba, explains that only in the first phase of distribution (the European fund establishes three periods) they have lost 20 tons of food despite the fact that requests for help have skyrocketed.
The Tenerife Food Bank faces this 2021 with uncertainty. This is precisely the year in which the agreement that regulates the FEAD must be reissued, although its president assures that the change in criteria that has been considered to distribute the food of the program augurs a discouraging future. “We are not going to reach the distribution figures for 2020, I thought that donations were going to increase but it is a dream, a chimera,” warns Cerón.
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