More Than 50 Bakeries Join the Solidarity Meal Action
- Written by Maja Jovanov
BELGRADE – Over 50 bakeries, pizzerias and fast food stores in Serbia have joined a drive named Solidarity Meal with the intention of helping impoverished people, and the action is gradually spreading in the region.
Outlet owners are being urged by the action’s organisers to join in and set all excess food aside for those who cannot afford it, and are really hungry. In the evening hours poor people can come to a bakery and pick up various baked products, pretzels, sandwiches...
“After the first bakery joined the drive in Subotica, the action really took off. About 50 bakeries in Serbia – in Novi Sad, Niš, Belgrade, Pirot, Subotica, Užice – contacted us with a desire to participate, but not just bakeries, also restaurants, pizzerias, fast food chains, even people selling at the green market and dairies. Besides baked goods, poor people can now get pizzas, hamburgers, pies, fruit and milk”, Nina Milo š , the organiser of the action, told the Home of the Good News .
“As far as baked goods are concerned, some bakeries deliver food directly to homeless shelters, while others are free to decide to whom they will give free food. Furthermore, co-operation with the organisation ‘Lice ulice’ (literally: Face of the Street) has allowed us to expand the action to homeless people, to inform them where they can get a meal. Usually in bakeries one of 30 customers buys a solidarity meal, which is an excellent result”, Nina said.
She added that the action has been joined by people who by buying these meals help those who cannot afford to buy food for themselves.
A Solidarity Meal in the Region
The drive has spread to Macedonia, where ten bakeries in Skopje and Kumanovo have joined it.
“The Serbs are very humane people. It’s the real truth. I was really surprised when I heard how much food was bought and distributed to shelters by some of our bakeries”, Nina said, adding that the second wave of popularising had just begun and that a motivation video had already been recorded.
She said that several world media had written about the action recently, including Yahoo news, Google news, the Independent, The Daily Mail and the Kuwait Times.
A similar initiative existed during the Second World War when more prosperous people initiated a drive named ‘Postponed bread’. Paying double for a loaf of bread allowed the poorest to get at least a piece of bread.
According to data released by the governmental Poverty Reduction Team, the number of hungry children is on a constant increase. Almost 10 per cent of Serbia’s population live below the poverty line, one out of four being a child.
If you would like to see a list of the bakeries, pizzerias, restaurants and other catering facilities in the action, click HERE.
More about the action can also be seen on the Facebook page Solidarna klopica .