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fromFabian Scheuermann
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The Offenbacher Tafel team of helpers now supplies more than 800 households. A separate delivery service has been set up for those in need from the corona risk group.
I’ve never worked so hard in my life, ”says Christine Sparr, referring to the months since the beginning of the corona pandemic. When the volunteer director of the Offenbacher Tafel says such a sentence, it matters – because of the already long high demand, the helpers at the Tafel have their hands full anyway. Due to the corona, the 16-person team had to change and expand its work almost completely this year. In the meantime, there are well over 800 households that supply the table with groceries and other everyday goods, says Sparr – more than ten times as much as when it was founded 14 years ago.
For example, a new delivery service has now been added where 54 elderly people and people belonging to the corona risk group are brought home food rations so that they do not have to queue at the remaining distribution point in Neusalzer Straße at the southern end of Offenbach. Sparr had to close the exit on Krafftstrasse, close to the center, because the distance rules could not have been observed there.
For example, “an old cleaning lady who receives a monthly pension of € 620” is supplied, ”says Sparr. For several months, the free rental of two cars by Land Rover ensured that goods could be brought to the risk group once a week – because the three table refrigerated trucks are needed to drive to supermarkets. So that the project can continue, Honda has now stepped in with two SUVs for another three months. Another company just donated 30,000 masks to the Tafel.
Help along
The Offenbacher Tafel has been an independent association since spring 2018. Before that, the establishment founded in early 2006 belonged to Tafel in Frankfurt.
Who donate or want to provide the association with other help, head Christine Sparr can write to [email protected] or contact her by phone on 069/2601 8347.
More info to the Offenbacher Tafel on the Internet at: www.tafel-offenbach.de fab
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Christine Sparr is a social worker. When she’s not working, she’s working for the board. The cell phone in your pocket is your mobile office. It keeps ringing. She was only able to do the extra work since Corona because she had short-time work, as she says. And because the other 15 volunteers also really worked hard. For example Helena Wolf, who takes part in the delivery trips. “Working at the blackboard has changed my image of Offenbach,” says the 23-year-old mechanical engineering student from Offenbach-Tempelsee.
If you take a look, poverty is omnipresent in the city. 30 minutes after Wolf filled the “Gabenzaun” at Mathildenplatz with bags full of bananas, pasta and baking mixes on Friday, everything is gone – taken away by those in need. The food bank also delivers food to the Hans-Böckler-Siedlung in the Bürgel district, because “people can’t afford a ticket to Neusalzer Straße at the other end of town,” says Sparr.
The 49-year-old has nothing bitter about her when she talks about the sometimes extreme poverty in Offenbach. The harshness of the situation seems to drive them all the more to do about it. In the spring, for example, she bought laptops for poor young people who would otherwise have had a hard time taking part in homeschooling. The Tafel team installed the Internet connections, and only afterwards did Sparr worry about which donors she could actually get the money from for her expenses.
In 2018, when the Offenbacher broke away from the Frankfurter Tafel, Sparr feared that donations from the rich neighboring city would not be made. But that did not come true, she says, visibly relieved: “There is still an invisible bridge between our cities.” Then she makes another phone call and gets into the car. There is always something to do – and a lot more since Corona.
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