Think you know about foodbanks and the people who use them? Think again.
Kayleigh Garthwaite’s book , Hunger Pains, challenges some of the biggest foodbank myths.
Here are the top 10…
1. Anyone can turn up and get a food parcel
You need a red voucher to get food, given to you by a frontline care professional who has identified you as being in need. It is likely that many people in food poverty who are outside of the ‘system’ aren’t getting help.
“If somebody does come in and say “Can I have some food?” you can say “Have you got a voucher?” as that’s the rules.” Foodbank volunteer
In her speech from The future of social justice event we held on Monday, Kayleigh Garthwaite, author of Hunger Pains, talks about her experience of volunteering at foodbanks and how we can harness and express the collective shame that should be felt over the existence of emergency food aid.
“For the last three years, I’ve been a volunteer and a researcher at a Trussell Trust foodbank in central Stockton, North East England, finding out how a foodbank works, who uses them, and why.
Every week, I prepared the three days’ worth of food that goes into each food parcel. I dealt with the administration of the red vouchers required to receive food, making sure that anyone who needed further support was told where it could be obtained. I volunteered at food collections at Tesco supermarkets, asking people to add an extra tin to their weekly shop. Most importantly, I sat and…
I wrote this few months ago, but I just posted in my new stuff 😀
Anyway, Last year my friends and I went to Makale, Toraja. We worked together with GMB “Gerakan Mari Berbagi”. There were 25 highly motivated students to learn English. We taught them to learn English started from the basic, very basic!. It was really challenging because fasting month. So, it was different 🙂 Basically, “Ramadhan didn’t come to change our schedule, but it came to charge our brain and our heart” 🙂
I applied for Indonesia youth forum in February after my friend “Rahmat” shared this information with me. I decided to apply because I was curious with the program, the outstanding speaker, and 154 talented participants around Indonesia. Then in early March, I received an email from the committee saying that I had been chosen to participate in Forum Indonesia Muda. I was very excited and very lucky to be able to attend this one week program. It was a good educational chance to learn about leadership and many things such as LPDP scholarship from the director, business, urban policy, parenting, social media, Indonesia’s treasure, self power, counter culture, and character building . The forum was such a huge success in creating a place for people to learn each other with various culture from different places. Through attending this event, I got many things from the speakers!
Mr. Ridwan Kamil ” The Mayor of Bandung”
At the beginning of the forum, we were introduced to the forum as 154 selected participants from 9000 registrants 🙂
Anyway, he is one of the speakers of this forum. Ridwan Kamil is the caretaker of lovable Bandung. As the first speaker, he explained about urban space and leadership. He said that being modern or being urban means that you must understand the philosophical thinking of being citizen. It means that, first: we have to accept that we are anonymous, we are no body, and that we live in anonymity. Second, we have to accept heterogeneity. If we don’t accept being heterogeneous, we will become a person with a problem in society. Third, being modern is accepting that we live in density.
We spent 3 days for joining the seminar with different topics and speakers. However, sometimes the boredom came up because the seminar started early morning until afternoon. But everything could be handled when the speakers showed the funny things 😀
Bau Nusantara Group “winner”
Then after 3 days of sitting in the big room while learning, finally started another great part of the forum was outbound. We had chance to relax and had fun. By doing this we learned about how to trust your friends and work as a team NOT as individual. Anyway, I still remember the “Yel-Yel” 🙂 Skip!
Mentol Group “Mentoring Online”
After discussing our project, a picture was a must.
Anyway, the topic was about mentoring online. We discussed about the contents of the project in the website.
Api Ekspresi Group
The last activity was Api Ekspresi such culture performance. At the time, we did Kecak and Saman dance 🙂 Such a great show for someone to learn about many other cultures at the same time. I could feel a bond between us, between cultures in such a peaceful and friendly way.
All in all, all of the things that I have learned during the forum are valuable. Indeed!
“Leadership is a deeply emotional journey of self discovery and humility. I had a very positive experience participating in the forum. I felt happy and excited about the whole idea that the founder and the committee let us to play a role in planning and preparing of the project.
I suggest you to join this forum in 2017. I’ll inform you soon!
Think you know about foodbanks and the people who use them? Think again.
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