Dear friends,
Looking towards our Gift Day on 11 June, today we hear from Andrea Goovaerts.
The Nyon Food Bank which our church is supporting has been set up several key partners working together. The Lost Food Project (TLFP) collects food produce from supermarkets and wholesalers, that would otherwise go to waste. These food products are passed on to charities who support people who are food insecure. Coup de Main (CdM) is one such charity that was set up in 2016-7 initially by La Côte Church to help refugees and asylum seekers to integrate locally. CdM thus signed a memorandum of understanding with TLFP to receive and distribute food on a weekly basis. 
TLFP organise the collection of food (mainly fruit, veg, bread & pastries and some meat, fish), from various outlets and take it to a warehouse in the region. The food is then collected by various associations to distribute at the food banks.
CdM collects food from TLFP warehouses in Gland & Nyon.
Additional dry goods, tins, pasta,rice, toiletries etc are donated separately.
Initially the CdM food bank was held outside a residential care home in Nyon which also houses a number of refugee families.
In the autumn 2022 the food bank moved to a more spacious and central location at la Fraternelle Church in Nyon, where it is run on two evenings a week, Wednesday by CdM & Thursday by la Fraternelle Church. The organisation and procedures for both evenings are the same, with volunteer coordinators from both food banks, keeping each other informed of changes.
The key philosophy for TLFP is that we are all partners in this project to reduce food waste and thus the amount of landfill and the size of our carbon footprint. Those receiving food are partners in this venture alongside those collecting and distributing the food. This helps to redress the balance of power between those serving food and those on the receiving end.
Recently the numbers of those receiving food have reached 123 families, predominantly refugees from Ukraine, but also local Swiss and asylum seekers from countries such as Afghanistan.
We now have a large number of volunteers, many of whom are very experienced:
- Drivers, who transport the food from warehouses;
- Servers to sort, lay out and serve the food and
- three Coordinators whose role is to:
* welcome the beneficiaries & organize a numbering system;
* record the beneficiaries
* recruit volunteers & monitor a weekly roster.
We give thanks to God for this project, which through God’s grace , was initiated by La Côte Church and implemented through CdeM/TLFP in close collaboration with members of la Fraternelle and Westlake churches. It has brought together many people of differing denominations, beliefs, faiths, races, genders, ages & social spheres, creating a welcoming community outreach to people, also of different backgrounds, to supplement some basic needs and to offer support.
Andrea Goovaerts
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