The boxes are ready, well aligned, filled with food products to last three days, but that most of the beneficiaries make last much longer: milk, fruits and vegetables, eggs, cans of soup … On each one is placed a personalized note according to needs. Here, a family of three is in need of diapers, infant milk and baby shampoo. There, a man alone does not have a can opener and does not have any pots, plates or cutlery: the gifts have to be adapted accordingly. A third would like sanitary napkins and household products.
Since the start of the pandemic, the food bank in Brixton and West Norwood, in south London, has been drowning in demands. From April to November 2020, it helped 25,500 people, more than double the previous year. And the trend has been confirmed ever since. In this residential suburb of the British capital, great poverty has surged during the confinements.
According to the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), a think tank, extreme poverty (defined at 70 pounds sterling, or 80 euros, per week for a single adult, after the cost of housing) has doubled in the Kingdom United during the pandemic, and went from 0.7% to 1.5% of all outbreaks.
“We have seen people appear who would never have believed that they would one day end up in a food bank, says Alison Inglis-Jones, member of the board of directors of the food bank. People who worked in events, shops, restaurants… ”
“I would never have believed that this could concern me”
Or people like Omar (not her real name), 43, a former warden (sort of municipal policeman) from the town hall of Southwark, south London, who is about to receive the first food donation of his life. “A year ago, I had a preconceived idea of the kind of people who go to food banks, and I never thought that could concern me, he explains, still surprised by his situation. Inside, I tell myself that I am different from all these people. And yet my fridge is empty. “
Extreme poverty doubled in the UK during the pandemic, falling from 0.7% to 1.5% of all households
He receives us in his charming little apartment in Camberwell, South London, with a living room overflowing with green plants that he pampers, and his black poodle, ” [s]takes precedence “. Bad luck has struck Omar twice in two years. The first time in the spring of 2019, when he had a bad fall in the course of his work. An intervention in a lady, a small stepladder on which he is mounted, and an animal tumbles backwards, with nothing to hold back. Today he has a deformed hand, severe pain in his back and no feeling in his left foot. He has been on sick leave since November 2019.
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