France:Alarm over growing soup kitchen users,fewer funds
5 mln more needed in 2012, Restos du Coeur chairman
Friday, 30 December 2011
(ANSAmed) - PARIS, DECEMBER 27 - Restos du Coeur, the most widespread network of soup kitchens for the poor in France, will need at least 5 million euros more from now until the end of 2012 to meet growing demand due to cuts in public funding.
This was announced by the chairman of the association by the same name, Olivier Berthe, in statements to the media calling for generosity on the part of the nation.
The number of those who coming to the ''restaurants of the heart'', he said, ''is steadily rising''. Over the past three years there has been a 25% increase, and last year the association served over 109 million meals to 860,000 beneficiaries, thanks to the mobilisation of 60,000 volunteers across France.
However, while experiencing growing efforts, funds are becoming ever slimmer. European subsidies, paid through the Food Aid to the Indigenous Programme, have been at the same level for many years and may soon be cut, alongside French state agencies which can afford to spend ever less on these initiatives.
''The result is that we must do ever more with less,'' said Bezier, noting that Restos du Coeur (which in addition to soup kitchens manage social reinsertion programmes) receive a third of their funding from state money and two thirds from private donations.
The association's request for aid has come only a few days after French president Nicholas Sarkozy's visit to the Resto Du Coeur logistics centre in Vitry-sur-Seine, in the working-class outskirts of Paris, during which he praised the ''exceptional work'' done by those working within the association.
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