The photography exhibition «Fight against Hunger», on display in the atrium of the Municipal Water and Waste Company of Portimão (EMARP), until January 4, is a pretext for a food collection, in partnership with the Food Bank Against Hunger of Algarve.
This exhibition, which features photos by Malin Lofgren, a Swedish journalist who has lived in the Algarve for many years, reflects the work carried out by the Food Bank in the European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion (2010) and the European Year of Volunteering and da Cidadania Ativa (2011) with the aim of recording, through photography, «the work in favor of the other that can only be done, joining forces. It's intense. It is contagious. It's for the good of all».
It is an exhibition inaugurated a few days before another collection campaign by the Food Bank at national level, scheduled for the next weekend, December 1st and 2nd.
«In the food collection, there are 48 almost uninterrupted hours of collaboration and sharing, bringing together children and adults who are committed, side by side, from dawn to dusk, in the months of May and November, to collect food at the entrance of supermarkets in the Algarve region.
Objective: delivery of the collected food to the less fortunate so that they can have food on the table every day and live with more dignity.
The activities begin in the morning, early, in an enviable organization and coordination of intervention groups, from scouts, catechists and social solidarity associations, to older people and anonymous people, strategically spread across the territory (in close collaboration with commercial establishments ), properly identified and prepared with BA bags in hand, to appeal to the importance of helping people in need and contributing to a fairer society.
You reach out to give and receive. Always with a smile. In a selfless act.
Ensuring the transport of food, motorcycle groups, the CTT, the Red Cross, among others, join to take the shopping carts to the vehicles they make available to BA. They take turns loading foodstuffs, rain or shine, so that everything arrives at the warehouse on time.
Hours and hours of folded backs in food sorting, putting everything in the designated stations so that staple foods such as rice, pasta, cooking oil, flour, grain and milk are packaged, packed, weighed and stored. It looks more like an anthill in an (almost) non-stop activity. A real human chain. A constant movement, an uninterrupted flow, in an environment of camaraderie where the uniforms of Senhor Doutor and Zé da Esquina are stripped at the door and where everyone is on an equal footing.
As rest is also necessary, and well deserved, volunteers are invited to watch musical moments and dance performances while working at the warehouse, combining business with pleasure.
In a fight against social exclusion and poverty, for a more humanized society, the work of hundreds of volunteers from the Algarve's Food Bank Against Hunger goes far beyond the two annual collections at national level. Extends throughout the year. It happens every day.
Thanks. By far the most used word in this giant appeal to solidarity and humanization of society is the intervention of the Food Bank Against Hunger of the Algarve in direct contact with the community through hundreds of volunteers every year in the collection of food. It is everyone's effort that makes this mission possible.
Thanks to everyone for Feeding this Idea!»
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