Banco Alimentare and Kellogg Italia: an innovative project for children’s better days

More than 90 delegates of European Food Banks from 30 countries attended the FEBA Annual Convention which took place from April 20-22 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The main theme of the meeting was “The sustanability of Food Banks” with a specific focus on fundrasing activities and best practices.

On Saturday morning we had a session dedicated to sharing fundraising skills among FEBA member: six Food Banks presented and discussed their most recent and effective initiatives in this field.

Fondazione Banco Alimentare Onlus presented the campaign “Three cheers for breakfast” launched in collaboration with Kellogg Italia.

According to ISTAT, one child in 10 in Italy lives in a disadvantaged socio-economic situation that prevents him from fully enjoying the right to adequate food both in terms of quality and quantity. More than 1.000.000 children suffer severe problems as a result of malnutrition caused by the living conditions. In addition evidences show that the most neglected meal of the day is breakfast. This situation can lead to serious and life-long effects on children and their academic achievement.

Through Breakfasts for Better Days Kellogg is fighting hunger every day and donating food to people in need worldwide. After the involvement of many European countries, in 2013 Kellogg Italia launched this programme also in Italy providing cereals and snacks to families and children in need in partnership with the 21 Food Banks. In 2016 the programme unexpectedly evolved: Kellogg Italia decided to keep supporting Fondazione Banco Alimentare Onlus with a donation of EUR 200.000,00 instead of breakfast products. The goal was to enable 135,000 children aged between 2 and 7 to enjoy a healthy breakfast through the support of the network of charitable organizations affiliated with the Food Banks. This initiative was combined with several events across Italy in order to raise awareness about the key role played by breakfast in the lives of children.

At national level Fondazione Banco Alimentare Onlus contacted many food companies in order to advocate about the issue of children food poverty and to recover more surplus food (e.g. milk, biscuits, yogurt, fresh fruit, juice, marmalade, cereals, baby food for breakfast, etc.) and/or obtain donated food products for the Food Banks most in need. At regional level, instead, each regional Food Bank contacted the charitable organizations assisting families and children aged between 2 and 7 in order to check the correct number of beneficiaries and estimate an adequate and sufficient quantity of breakfast products. At the same time each Food Bank internally checked its own availability of breakfast food and, in the event of an insufficient quantity, started to increase the quantity of surplus food recovered from food donors.

All the relevant charitable organizations received a letter containing the presentation and explanation of the project and some leaflets to be distributed to the final beneficiaries.

During the delivering of food, the volunteers of Food Banks stressed the importance of this joint collaboration between Fondazione Banco Alimentare Onlus and Kellogg Italia and the importance of delivering the food package to families and children aged between 2 and 7 with the explanatory leaflet.

Finally at the end of 2016 and at the beginning of 2017 Fondazione Banco Alimentare Onlus, Kellogg Italia, and the regional Food Banks organized 5 public meeting throughout Italy: Bologna, Udine, Catania, and Salerno. The final meeting took place in Rome where the project was presented at the Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies.

The partnership with Kellogg Italia allowed Fondazione Banco Alimentare Onlus and the regional Food Banks to improve our daily mission, i.e. to recover surplus food from all the secotrs of the food supply chain and its redistribution to charitable organizations that assist people in need in Italy.

Outcomes of the project

• Redistribution of 2,100,000 kg of breakfast products;
• Participation of 4,900 charitable organizations;
• Involvement of over 106,000 children aged between 2 and 7;
• Dissemination of more than 100,000 leaflets providing information about healthy and nutritious breakfast.

This project represented an absolute innovation both for Fondazione Banco Alimentare Onlus and Kellogg Italia.

In 2017 the project is going to be continued with a focus on elderly people (over 65).