The waterproof jacket dripping with rain, the glasses fogged up with each breath, Scarlette, 70, patient, a tote bag folded in the crook of her arm. Like so many others in front of and behind her, this septuagenarian came, Wednesday afternoon, to inflate the long queue that forms three times a week in August in front of the Saint-Pierre-du-Lac church in Créteil.
Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon, she joins the scene to benefit from the August food relief operation (ASA). “When I have paid everything, I have 80 euros left for the month, calculates this inhabitant of Créteil with a battered life. Without this distribution, I would have nothing to live on. “
Organized by the Solidarity Council of the Diocese of Créteil, with the active collaboration of the faithful and officials of the Sahaba Mosque in Créteil, this operation takes over from the charities which, for the most part, close in summer. However, if food distribution operations are essentially disappearing, hunger does not take a vacation.
In Créteil, but also in Villejuif, where the same united spirit of ASA 94 animates many volunteers in the parish of Sainte-Colombe, this help in the heart of summer is essential. “Without this help, we could not eat, it would be very complicated”, summarizes Mohamed, 44, accompanied by his wife and his three children, including a youngest 9 months old. Housed in Villeneuve-le-Roi through number 115, this family cannot do without such food support. “We are impatiently awaiting the start of the school year,” says the dad.
14% more meals distributed since the pandemic
Their three weekly trips back and forth between their accommodation and the parish of Saint-Pierre-du-Lac will be materialized by bags of food. “Their content is supposed to allow eating for two days, until the next distribution,” says Raffaello Sillitti, representative of the mosque of Créteil. The bags distributed on Friday afternoon are a little more inflated, so that the beneficiaries can spend the weekend without fear of hunger.
The organization is well established. The volunteers, mostly Catholics and Muslims, are on the bridge. On the logistics side, we also make sure that everything works like clockwork, that the flow is regular. “We have students who come to help us,” explains Marie-Thérèse Groyer-Picard, the diocesan leader of Val-de-Marne for ASA and a veritable control tower of the Créteil center. These young people, I consider them as my assistants in logistics. “
Every morning on distribution days, dozens of volunteers get busy filling hundreds of plastic bags with cans of tuna, packets of pasta, mash, cereals, coffee… “There are also prepared bags. especially for single people who cannot heat their meals, who live in a hotel or in the street ”, specifies the manager, while the team, made up in particular of Catholic and Muslim pairs, fills shopping bags with wheels and shopping bags with eggs, fruits and vegetables.
“Before the Covid, we recovered the unsold items, but we decided to avoid increasing the amount of handling,” explains Marie-Thérèse Groyer-Picard. She is well aware that this choice deprives these women and men of a significant intake of fruits and vegetables.
All the more so as more and more beneficiaries are flocking to these distributions. “Until the arrival of the pandemic, we had about 90,000 meal equivalents between Créteil and Villejuif, she rewinds. There, it will be more than 110,000, or more than 14% increase. “The trend should become clearer in the coming weeks …
The very active French Red Cross of Val-de-Marne
Like other associations, the French Red Cross has been on the bridge since the start of the health crisis. As soon as the first confinement began, several aid and support systems for the most vulnerable and in a situation of social isolation were set in motion.
This is the case of the solidarity concierge system “Croix-Rouge chez vous” (CRCV), thanks to which many people have been able, for example, to order essential products (food, hygiene and cleaning products). . In total, in 2020, 2,620 “CRCV” baskets were made.
The local units of the French Red Cross of Val-de-Marne have not relaxed their efforts in 2021 to collect and distribute food and hygiene products. Impacted by the crisis as in 2020, the students of the University of Paris-Est Créteil continued to benefit from this type of operation in 2021. “The collaboration between associations was also very strong, welcomes Hervé Pilet, spokesperson. of the Departmental Red Cross. We know that we can count on them during the next crisis. “
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