Comitans ETS Foundation supports families who receive food aid from local charitable bodies, with particular attention to vulnerable mothers and children.
Food poverty in Italy is becoming an increasingly widespread and worrying problem, often making access to food and especially nutritionally adequate food difficult. In 2023, almost 3 million Italians asked for help to eat and over 600 thousand children under 15 needed assistance to feed themselves. Malnutrition, in all its forms, undernutrition, micro- and macronutrient deficiencies and obesity, is linked to poverty and food insecurity; this can affect your long-term health.
The right to food and healthy eating must be guaranteed to everyone, especially boys and girls living in fragile socioeconomic conditions.
UNICEF indices have objectively correlated poverty with food insecurity and consequently with malnutrition. In Italy, in 2020, there were two million families in absolute poverty and more than one million minors suffered from food shortages. In 2023 the Food Bank recorded a boom in requests. All this while, at a European level, around 88 million tonnes of food are wasted per year.
There is currently no data on the nutritional quality and adequacy of food provided by charitable organizations to beneficiaries. Volunteers from the charities interviewed, among the partners of the Comitans ETS Foundation, highlighted the general lack of nutritionally appropriate food for mothers and young children. Exactly that group of individuals who most need healthy nutrition also to reduce the risk of future development of non-communicable diseases (cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancer among the most common). Volunteers also expressed their inability to provide viable alternatives or suggest additions for purchase, due to their lack of knowledge regarding nutrition.
The Nutridono Project, which you will support through the Run4Rome solidarity relays, was created to respond to these needs and shortcomings. We have developed a Web Application to support volunteers from third sector organizations who distribute food aid to families living in poverty, with vulnerable mothers and children.
Thanks to the advice provided by the app, the volunteers will be able to put together food parcels that are nutritionally more suited to the needs of the people who receive them.
The project aims to promote equitable food accessibility for low-income families and people who receive food aid.
The objectives of the project are:
– train and support volunteers from third sector organizations in distributing products nutritionally suited to their needs to mothers and children (this, thanks to the training courses and the App, can immediately make a difference in the food delivered to mothers and children)
– strengthen the awareness of poor families on the importance of adequate nutrition for their health (this aspect is fundamental to ensure that the knowledge that is often denied to those who live in marginalized situations, can also reach them to become more aware of the importance of nutrition for their health);
– bring to the attention of the food distribution system the need to include foods suitable for the well-being of the beneficiaries in the parcels (thanks to the data collected with the App we will be able to know which foods mothers and children are missing, integrating them in a targeted way without waste) .
Federico Petruio
federico.petruio@fondazionecomitans.org
3515017990