 |
The Independent Food Aid Network (IFAN) is the UK network of independent food aid providers. Its membership includes over 550 independent food banks as well as other types of food aid provider. [1] A charity since October 2018, [2] IFAN supports and advocates on behalf of its member food aid organisations, collates independent food bank data, and campaigns for changes that would end the need charitable food aid in the UK through what's called a 'cash first' approach to food insecurity. [3]
The network was founded in 2016 based on learning from Canada and is the second largest network of food banks in the UK. [4] The network's vision is of "a society without the need for charitable food aid and in which good food is accessible to all" and IFAN advocates for "an adequate social security system, as well as fair wages and job security." [5]
In 2017, a list of independent food banks put together by Sabine Goodwin on behalf of the Independent Food Aid Network revealed the scale of food bank use in the UK at that time. The research found that, together with the largest network of UK food banks (the Trussell Trust) there were over 2,000 food banks regularly giving out emergency food parcels - meaning that, as reported by The Guardian: "the level of food bank use is far greater than headline figures indicate." [6]
IFAN's work has been coordinated by Sabine Goodwin since 2018. [4] In 2018, IFAN started to collate data from independent food banks in Scotland in collaboration with the A Menu for Change project. [7] IFAN's data was used to extrapolate figures for UK-wide food bank use in the 2019 State of Hunger report. [8] In January 2020, IFAN reported that 1,000 emergency food parcels were distributed in Scotland every day. [9] Since the March 2020, IFAN has published data collated from independent food banks across the UK. [10]
Alongside other groups, IFAN campaigned for the measurement of household food insecurity and in February 2019, DWP officials announced that food insecurity questions would be included in the annual Family Resources Survey. [11] In October 2019, IFAN warned of the impact on food banks of a no-deal Brexit. [12] In March 2020, IFAN reported on the impact of COVID-19 panic-buying on food banks. [13] In November 2020, IFAN's now director, Sabine Goodwin, wrote in The Big Issue that food poverty is not about food and that Marcus Rashford's fight must not be a "missed opportunity" to end poverty for good. [14]
In January 2021, the group wrote to the British Prime Minister to protest the "challenges and risks" posed to food bank volunteers during the pandemic, asking that the Government should not rely on charities "to fill the gaps left by holes in the social security system and inadequate wages." [15] In August 2021, IFAN's Coordinator Sabine Goodwin wrote for the British Medical Journal, that following the policy decision to cut 20 pounds from Universal Credit, UK food banks are facing the "busiest and most difficult winter on record." [16]
Since June 2020, the IFAN has co-produced 'Worrying About Money?' or cash first referral leaflets first in Scotland, and since the end of 2020 in England and Wales. [17] By March 2024, IFAN has collaborated with local partners including local authority teams, advice providers and food banks to publish 'Worrying About Money?' resources in over 120 local authorities. IFAN produces leaflets as well as interactive, poster, easy read and audio versions.
IFAN champions a 'cash first' or income-focused approach to rising food insecurity. [18] IFAN's director, Sabine Goodwin, sits on the Advisory Group for the Scottish Government's plan Cash First: Towards ending the need for food banks and IFAN's work to co-produce cash first referral leaflets is action six in this plan. [19]
In 2020 and 2021, IFAN worked alongside Feeding Britain and University of York to co-produce a series of research webinars on Structural Inequalities and food bank use. [20]
IFAN is a member of the following wider alliances and campaigns: [21] [22]
In December 2020 and January 2021, the BMJ ran their Annual Appeal to raise money for the Independent Food Aid Network. [23] BMJ readers raised over £60,000 for the charity. [24]
In politics, humanitarian aid, and the social sciences, hunger is defined as a condition in which a person does not have the physical or financial capability to eat sufficient food to meet basic nutritional needs for a sustained period. In the field of hunger relief, the term hunger is used in a sense that goes beyond the common desire for food that all humans experience, also known as an appetite. The most extreme form of hunger, when malnutrition is widespread, and when people have started dying of starvation through lack of access to sufficient, nutritious food, leads to a declaration of famine.
War on Want is an anti-poverty charity based in London. War on Want works to challenge the root causes of poverty, inequality and injustice through partnership with social movements in the global South and campaigns in the UK. War on Want's slogan is "poverty is political" and its stated focus is on the root causes of poverty rather than its effects.
Islamic Relief Worldwide is a faith-inspired humanitarian and development agency which is working to support and empower the world's most vulnerable people.
A food bank is a non-profit, charitable organization that distributes food to those who have difficulty purchasing enough to avoid hunger, usually through intermediaries like food pantries and soup kitchens. Some food banks distribute food directly with their food pantries.
Tearfund is an international Christian relief and development agency based in Teddington, UK. It currently works in around 50 countries, with a primary focus on supporting those in poverty and providing disaster relief for disadvantaged communities.
Global Justice Now, formerly known as the World Development Movement (WDM), is a membership organisation based in the United Kingdom which campaigns on issues of global justice and development in the Global South.
Sufra is a community food and support hub based in Stonebridge ward in the London Borough of Brent.
Feeding America is a United States–based non-profit organization that is a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks that feed more than 46 million people through food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, and other community-based agencies. Forbes ranks it as the largest U.S. charity by revenue. Feeding America was known as America's Second Harvest until August 31, 2008.
Food rescue, also called food recovery, food salvage or surplus food redistribution, is the practice of gleaning edible food that would otherwise go to waste from places such as farms, produce markets, grocery stores, restaurants, or dining facilities and distributing it to local emergency food programs.
Oxfam is a British-founded confederation of 21 independent non-governmental organizations NGOs, focusing on the alleviation of global poverty, founded in 1942 and led by Oxfam International. It began as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief in Oxford, UK, in 1942, to alleviate World War Two related hunger and continued in the aftermath of the war. By 1970, Oxfam had established an international presence, in India, Australia, Denmark, and North America.
FareShare is a charity network established in 1994, which aims at relieving food poverty and reducing food waste in the United Kingdom. It does this by obtaining good quality surplus food from the food industry that would otherwise have gone to waste and sending it to frontline charities and community groups across the UK.
Hunger in the United States of America affects millions of Americans, including some who are middle class, or who are in households where all adults are in work. The United States produces far more food than it needs for domestic consumption—hunger within the U.S. is caused by some Americans having insufficient money to buy food for themselves or their families. Additional causes of hunger and food insecurity include neighborhood deprivation and agricultural policy. Hunger is addressed by a mix of public and private food aid provision. Public interventions include changes to agricultural policy, the construction of supermarkets in underserved neighborhoods, investment in transportation infrastructure, and the development of community gardens. Private aid is provided by food pantries, soup kitchens, food banks, and food rescue organizations.
Chronic hunger has affected a sizable proportion of the UK's population throughout its history. Following improved economic conditions that followed World War II, hunger became a less pressing issue. Yet since the lasting global inflation in the price of food that began in late 2006 and especially since the financial crisis of 2009, long term hunger began to return as a prominent social problem. Albeit only affecting a small minority of the UK's population, by December 2013, according to a group of doctors and academics writing in the British Medical Journal, hunger in the UK had reached the level of a "public health emergency".
The Trussell Trust is an NGO and charity that works to end the need for food banks in the United Kingdom. It "is based on, shaped, and guided by Christian principles" and supports a network of over 1,200 food bank centres to provide emergency food and compassionate, practical support to people in crisis, while campaigning for long-term change to the structural issues that lock people into poverty. Its main office is in Salisbury, England.
Marcus Rashford is an English professional footballer who plays as a forward for Premier League club Manchester United and the England national team.
City Harvest London is a charitable organisation focused on alleviating food insecurity and food waste across London. City Harvest feeds over 12,000 Londoners a day with quality, nutritious, surplus food from a myriad of food producers. City Harvest delivers food to over 350 organisations and projects in London that serve almost every vulnerable group in the capital including but not limited to; children, refugees, families, women facing domestic violence, the homeless. Food often acts as a tool that breaks down barriers between organisations and their users and becomes a gateway to services which address other societal issues.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, food insecurity has intensified in many places – in the second quarter of 2020 there were multiple warnings of famine later in the year. In an early report, the Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) Oxfam-International talks about "economic devastation" while the lead-author of the UNU-WIDER report compared COVID-19 to a "poverty tsunami". Others talk about "complete destitution", "unprecedented crisis", "natural disaster", "threat of catastrophic global famine". The decision of WHO on 11 March 2020, to qualify COVID as a pandemic, that is "an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people" also contributed to building this global-scale disaster narrative.
In the realm of humanitarian aid, Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) is recognized as an umbrella term for two of the common modalities of assistance for delivering swift and flexible humanitarian aid support to populations affected by various crises, the third being in-kind assistance.
In 2020, a mural of footballer Marcus Rashford by street artist Akse P19 was painted in the Withington area of Manchester, United Kingdom. The mural was created in recognition of the work Rashford did during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom to help tackle child food poverty.
Dev Sharma is a British food activist, chair of BiteBack 2030 and was a youth MP for Central Hampshire in the UK Youth Parliament.
