'We follow the classic Robin Hood principle. We take from where there is too much and give to where it is needed. But we do it legally,' says Sabine Werth, founder of the first German Tafel food bank. DW's LisaHaenel examines its history and future.
The inspiration came from the United States. A member of a Berlin women's group had read an article about volunteers in New York who were distributing discarded groceries to homeless people."And then we thought, 'OK, we can do that too,'" Sabine Werth told DW."We wanted to set a place at the table for those who otherwise couldn't afford it."
"We follow the classic Robin Hood principle. We take from where there is too much and give to where it is needed. But we do it legally," said Werth smilingly. The food banks began as a way of saving food and alleviating hardship, but they have now become a gauge of poverty — or, as the chairperson of the national umbrella organization, Jochen Brühl, told DW, "a seismograph for societal situations and developments." He said that when the first Tafel opened in 1993, poverty was not yet a widely discussed topic in German society. According to him, the general tenor was that poverty did not exist in Germany: Whoever wanted to work, worked.
The food banks often intervene in sociopolitical debates — and that is intentional."If we are genuinely engaging with these issues, that automatically makes us political," said Brühl."Not in the sense of being affiliated with any particular political party. But we have influence at a sociopolitical level because we hold up a mirror to society and show what is obviously not working in some places.
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