‘Restaurant of Love’ helps feed the homeless in Tunis
On a corner by the entrance to Tunis zoo, Leila waits for a hot meal from the Tunisian capital’s “Restaurant of Love” in a cardboard shelter where she and her dogs sleep. The 50-year-old says she has been living on the streets for more than 27 years. “I don’t want to go to the shelter centers,” and feels safer in her makeshift abode, despite the dangers of robbery and violence on the street, she says as she fixes a plastic cover over her bed for the cold winter night.
Leila is always happy to see the volunteers from the NGOs Universelle and Samu Social when they bring her food and clothing every Friday night. For the rest of the week, she often has to make do with no more than a tin of sardines. The Friday night meal is from the kitchen of the “Restaurant of Love”, a charitable initiative launched by Universelle three years ago to help feed the growing number of Tunis’ homeless. There are no official data on the exact number of people living on the streets in the capital, but it is estimated to be in the hundreds.
The “Restaurant of Love” is the “first of its kind” in Tunisia, says Nizar Khadhari, the 39-year-old head of Universelle. The idea is simple - a regular eatery affordable for everyone, with a plate of pasta costing just 4.5 dinars or $1.40. Homeless people can eat there for free - accounting for around 30 percent of the 400-450 meals served there every day. But paying customers can also make donations in a tin by the cash register to help cover the costs.
“All profits go to the homeless, and we also employ some of them... We try to motivate them to return and integrate into society,” says Khadhari. “The economic situation is hitting this vulnerable group of people particularly hard,” says Khadhari, who predicts that the number of rough sleepers in the capital will continue to grow “due to rising prices and a lack of job opportunities”.
According to World Bank data, growth of the North African country’s highly indebted economy stood at just 1.2 percent in 2023, while inflation stood at 8.3 percent in 2022. And with the economic woes exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and soaring food prices in the wake of the war in Ukraine, poverty rates are on the rise in the population of 12 million. According to official statistics, the poverty rate in Tunisia stood at 16.6 percent nationwide in 2021 but was nearer 25 percent in rural areas.