September 30, 2015
Food for all
Caritas Internationalis, which unites 165 national Caritas including the Czech one, wants you to think about food: where it comes from, how to make sure everyone’s got enough, the right quality of food, its ability to bring us together, its essential role in everyone’s lives and its crucial role in the life of every person.
Almost two years ago, Pope Francis helped us launch the “One Human Family, Food for All” campaign. The campaign crossed the globe in a wave of prayer, it encouraged many Caritas organisations to advocate their governments for the right to food and it even prompted Caritas Panama to compose a song. Caritas International (CI) has been present as part of the campaign at Expo 2015 the World’s Fair in Milan which has the theme “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life.”
In October there was a meeting of representatives of the Caritas from the whole world and many of disscusions with many of them were arranged.
Paolo Beccegato from Caritas Italy said while presenting message about War and food: “Hunger doesn’t necessarily cause war, but poverty does.” He also quoted a report: “A society which is less hungry is less vulnerable and less exposed to the risk of war. At the same time, war destroys resources and worsens quality of life and production systems.” Paolo gave the example of Syria, where food production was nearly halved in the first year (2011-2012) of war.War leads to poverty which leads to hunger which leads to people fleeing their countries.
Don Antonio Sciortino, editor of the Italian weekly Famiglia Cristiana, went on to speak about the unprecedented refugee crisis in Europe at the moment. He said that the media has an important role in pricking the world’s conscience regarding the suffering of people fleeing wars, dictatorships and poverty, and we as the audience have an important task of putting the information and images we see into context. He said those of us who saw the recent image of a small Syrian boy on a Turkish beach who had drowned while fleeing the war in his country with his family needed to ask ourselves: “how did he end up dying like that?"
On the second day of meeting CI introduced, Susanna Tkalec, Caritas Internationalis humanitarian director, gave a fascinating account of Caritas’ work across the world in emergencies and in situations of chronic need. In reference to the “Forgotten Conflicts” report she said, “Caritas is there – even in the forgotten conflicts.”
Workers of CI and Caritas Ambrosiana, which created exhibition for EXPO 2015 and for the whole time makes sure it is working well, were speaking with people from around the world about hunger and poverty issues. The issue of food and war is cleverly represented in Wolf Vostell’s art installation which sits in the centre of the kiosk and has been loaned to Caritas for the EXPO. The intriguing 1973 artwork depicts a battered Cadillac containing machine guns and surrounded by loaves of bread wrapped in newspaper. It’s considered a critique of the battle between consumerism and the sharing of resources.
Caritas debated long and hard about whether to have a presence at the six-month long EXPO. However, it was decided that we needed to be able to contribute to the food and hunger debate and to reach out to people to raise awareness about the need to share and be aware that over 800 million people don’t have enough food in a world of plenty.
Sergio Malacrida, representative of Caritas Ambrosiana, was asked what kind of reaction is common while meeting visitors and he remembered a group of 8 Chinese children, who came to look at the exhibition. The next day they came again and each of them put 50 euroes donation into a donation box. Their father explained that they were so affected by this exhibition that they fasted themselves and money they would have spent for food rather donated for a charity. “This is the money for the food for poor people in the world," one of the children added.
The main activities of the campaign in the Czech Republic were shorter term, “Food for everyone“ campaigns were held in 2014 and 2015. In Czech Republic a report about using donated food in charity facilities was published and information shown during Czech movies. This year Caritas Czech Republic focused on warnings about the problem of wasting food.
