Egyptian Food Bank helps securing 58M meals per month to low-income citizens regionally

CAIRO – 17 April 2022: Head of the Regional Food Banks Network Moez Shohdy stated Sunday that the Egypt-based NGO helped save 58 million cooked meals - produced by hotels – from getting wasted monthly.

The network, which is founded by the Egyptian Food Bank, provided such touristic establishments with manuals on how to handle the extra food and hand it over to the NGO so it would be distributed among orphanages and retirement houses of low-income elderly. As for the leftovers, they get turned into cattle feed and fertilizers.  

Shohdy pointed out that wasted food constitute 30 percent of world economies. That is why the Egyptian food bank had persuaded many hotels and resorts in Egypt to reduce the size of dishes at open-buffets, which made the amount of leftovers drop by 30 percent.

The head of the network pointed out that his establishment currently operates in 44 countries in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. In addition, it transferred know-how to other food banks in the region so they would be able to distribute meals monthly instead of occasionally, depending on the donations they receive.

That initiative was extended to 61 food banks in Latin America and Europe, which made the number of partners of the Egyptian Food Bank worldwide 105.

Speaking of its work in Egypt, the Egyptian food bank delivered professional training to 7.2 million former beneficiaries, who all got jobs, and as a result, became no longer in need of the NGOs' services.

Shohdy also highlighted that the Egyptian Food Bank sets a number of requirements for beneficiaries to continue acquiring meals. Those include sending children to school, and doing community service in the form of cleaning the streets where they live.

Parliamentarian Amira Saber, secretary of the Committee of Foreign Relations at the House of Representatives, showcased last week some features of the draft law she prepared and submitted to reduce food waste.

During the event organized by the Coordination Committee of Parties' Youth Leaders and Politicians (CPYP), of which she is member, Saber pointed out that the annual amount of food waste per capita in Egypt is 50 kilograms.

The MP underscored that such quantity is huge, given the percentage of poverty in the country, and the fact that Egypt suffers from water poverty.

The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) had indicated that poverty rates in Egypt fell 2.8 percent during FY2019/2020, recording 29.7 percent, down from 32.5 percent in FY2017/2018, and that the water share per capita is 570 cubic meters.