UAE’s 100 Million Meals campaign receives support from Egyptian Food Bank founder
An Egyptian philanthropist who wants to end hunger in the country linked up with the UAE’s 100 Million Meals campaign to provide food to low-income families during Ramadan.
Moez El Shohdi helped to found the Egyptian Food Bank in 2006 with the aim of addressing the root causes of hunger in the country of more than 100 million people.
He expanded his humanitarian efforts in 2013 when he created the Food Banking Regional Network.
Through the network, he will join the UAE’s project to provide food to people and families across 20 countries.
The initiative, organised by Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives, has already begun to distribute food in several countries, including Egypt.
The project raised Dh78 million ($21.2m) in funding in a week.
Mr El Shohdi’s goal is to end hunger in the Arab world by 2030 – a target that was pushed back from 2025 because of the Arab uprisings in 2011 and the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Ending hunger is doable, but it needs awareness and a culture change,” he told The National.
Mr El Shohdi, 62, said the wastefulness of the hospitality industry inspired him to embark on his mission to end food poverty in Egypt.
As the president of Style Hotels International’s Mena division since 1993, Mr Al Shohdi regularly saw large quantities of food being thrown away after buffets.
“People pile pyramids of food on their plates. They consume half or a quarter and the rest is thrown away,” he said.
About 15 million Egyptians do not have access to enough nutritious food to stay healthy, the World Food Programme said.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that about a third of the world’s food is lost or wasted every year. In the Mena region, uneaten leftovers account for 34 per cent of food waste, the organisation said.
The Food Banking Regional Network serves 15 million families every month and last year, during the early stages of the pandemic, it provided meals to 3.2 million more families as part of its disaster relief efforts.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian Food Bank is focused on reducing waste and distributing excess food from hotels and restaurants.
“Food banks have been worldwide since the 1960s, but they used to work on distributing excess production or nearly expired products to people in need,” said Mr El Shohdi.
When he was invited to the UN organisation’s Arab world food security conference in 2011, he said “everyone was talking about increasing production”.
At the time, his food bank saved 17 million meals from being wasted every month.
“If we save one third of the waste, we can end hunger,” Mr El Shohdi said.
To help reduce food waste, Mr El Shohdi developed a manual to show people how to handle cooked food and save leftovers in foil containers.
He persuaded hotels to reduce the diameter of their buffet dinner plates from 32 to 27 centimetres.
“The outcome was the weight of the food that was thrown away decreased by 30 per cent,” he said.
The food bank depends on 64,000 volunteers across Egypt, as well as donations and investment.
Mr El Shohdi encourages donors to give on a monthly basis, rather than donating large sums intermittently.
“The people we serve need food – and food is daily. We need to change the culture so that payments are sustainable,” he said.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that about a third of the world’s food is lost or wasted ever year