The food bank in Amsterdam Noord

Writer: Kiete Schmitt
During corona time, you are probably preoccupied a lot with yourself and your family. Logical, because that's what keeps you going during this sometimes lonely time. Corona has held us in its grip for a while now and it is not exactly getting better at the moment.

Rising infections and hospital admissions are unfortunately not the only problem. Other groups of people are also suffering from the effects of the corona crisis, including visitors to the food bank. Not only is the influx of visitors rising, but transport has been and continues to be a problem for many people. Bizarre as it is, visitors do not get reimbursed for their travel expenses. These people go to a food bank because they do not have enough money for food, but they are expected to spend €7 on a CFP ticket. The world upside down if you ask me.

Therefore, at the end of the summer, the Action Committee decided to do something about this. After an interesting themed evening about the food bank of Amsterdam North, we started a fundraising campaign to raise money to transport food bank guests. The campaign has now closed and we raised over €750 euros. An incredible amount! The plan was to have DWARSers also drop off food parcels to people who cannot easily come to the food bank, but due to corona this has unfortunately been postponed for now. We hope this can still go ahead soon.

We also hope to get more attention to this major problem in the municipality of Amsterdam, especially after this action. One of our speakers, Niels Ras, has already been busy with this recently, but hopefully this will give an extra push. Despite the problem not being solved at the moment, we are very happy with the result so far.

Thank you to all the people who donated or otherwise got involved!