The food bank has collected almost 2,300 tons of food in the last three days

The Food Bank’s anti-hunger campaign has collected nearly 2,300 tonnes of food in the last three days, up 10% from the same period last year, the organization said this Monday.

In a statement, the Portuguese Federation of Food Banks Against Hunger (FPBACF) said it had collected more than 2,292 tons of food from 21 banks spread across the country, up from 2,098 tons in the 2022 campaign.

“The campaign went very well. We had a lot of volunteers and a great response from those shopping. The Portuguese have once again shown great solidarity by donating time or food,” FPBACF President Isabelle Jaunet told Lusa.

About 40,000 volunteers made possible the campaign, which ran from Friday to Sunday under the slogan “Your help can be what’s missing from the family table.”

Isabelle Jaunet welcomed the commitment of the volunteers, “completely different people who want to be side by side, contributing to the same cause.”

“There are a lot of young people there, scouts, guides, but there are also schools and companies that promote volunteering, but there are also people who show up individually,” he said, adding that there are “people of all ages, beliefs and even different football clubs.” “.

In the first two days, 1,555 tons of food were collected.

The FPBACF President recalled that more and more people are experiencing serious financial difficulties: “When people ask for help with food, it happens when all other requests for help have been exhausted. It’s not easy to ask for help with food.”

“About two million people live on less than 591 euros a month,” emphasized Isabelle Jaunet, recalling that half of them “live on less than 224 euros.”

According to data recently published by the National Institute of Statistics, 17% of Portuguese residents were at risk of poverty last year (0.6 percentage points more than last year).

In addition to these cases revealed in statistics, there are many other situations, such as “young couples with children” who work, have higher incomes, but “cannot pay the bills,” warned Isabelle Jaunet, citing examples of families that “saw that the loan on the house has quadrupled.”

“We’ve seen people fall into poverty who never thought they’d be in that situation,” he lamented, explaining that more and more people are using food banks.

Typically, the Food Bank runs two campaigns a year to collect essential food items for people in need, such as milk, rice, pasta, butter, olive oil, grains, beans, tuna, sausages, biscuits and breakfast cereals.

Goods delivered to volunteers as they left supermarkets were sent to various Food Bank warehouses, where they were separated and packaged.

The collected food will be distributed, starting this week, to 2,600 social solidarity institutions, which will deliver it to approximately 400,000 people with demonstrated food need in the form of baskets or prepared meals.