A Social Diagnosis

Isabel Jonet has already dedicated the last 20 years of her career to the “Banco Alimentar” (BA) combating hunger. Poland, Bulgaria and Angola are the most recent countries where she’s exported the BA model. The first question we ask her is provocative. Wouldn’t it be normal, in a country that wanted to be European, for society to have evolved so that it didn’t need an organisation such as BA?

“Well, what is normal is that societies generate enough wealth and employment to absorb all their resources. What I think has failed here in Portugal is that there hasn’t been sustainable development”, she answers.

In truth, the 19 BA branches throughout Portugal have registered an increase in demand. “All the charitable institutions are asking for more because more people are asking them for help – and because these organisations have increasingly less resources. They ask us for food so that they can channel the money they have into other more critical areas of intervention”.

In practice, this means helping families who, for example, have stopped being able to pay dues “for crèches and old people’s homes”. “Today, at least one in five Portuguese families has at least one member unemployed. Thus, they’ve had to cut expenses – but there are some expenses that they can’t escape from, like mortgage payments”, Jonet adds.

“Institutions can’t take a baby, or an old person, and turf them out into the street. This is the kind of problem that has been getting worse in the last six months”.

One solution could be to use the “social emergency programme”, announced by minister Pedro Mota Soares. “It should have around 200 million euros at its disposal and work in partnership with the institutions that really know the problems on the ground, and have done a lot of work there already. I think the programme will work, as there really isn’t any other solution”.

Her diagnosis continues. “Today, there is another terrible problem - the seizures of property, and judicial and fiscal fines”. “People’s lives are destroyed. People are put into a very difficult position, very often with their children, very often in situations where there are already divorces – as once there’s no money, families are destroyed; people don’t get on and stop having the minimum of balance in their lives,” she laments.

Still on the subject of state help, Jonet wishes there weren’t so many prejudices – “an injustice” are her words. “There are people accused of receiving the minimum state support, or unemployment benefit, without working” but the truth “is that they no longer have a place in the job market. They’re people who are so badly qualified” that they simply don’t find work.

Age is another prejudicial factor. “People who lose their job aged 48 years or more will find it difficult to work again because they’re too old for the job market. Their knowledge and skills are no longer of value”, she laments.

Equally, “it’s absolutely unacceptable that we’re paying taxes to put young people through higher education courses who will then go on to emigrate to other countries, because they can’t find work here! It’s unacceptable that we have to import doctors from other countries, and send our own medical students to the Czech Republic!

“Effectively, there are many Portuguese who don’t want to work in jobs that they consider beneath them. They find it an indignity to work in the fields, or in domestic service, or as a waitress. Something has to change, as this has become a spiral that cannot continue”.

The BA president considers “we have to rediscover the value of things”. “I think we’re witnessing a number of economic paradoxes at the moment as we’ve all been encouraged into very unreal habits of consumption. It’s one of the perversities of the developed world in which we live”.

For example, most Portuguese people have two mobile phones. They don’t need them – but the necessity to have two has been created because people think it’s cheaper to have two different tariffs. In the end, it’s more expensive because they end up making more calls”, she explains.

It’s completely unrealistic, for instance, that a couple should start out these days with all manner of domestic appliances. This kind of facility in possession means that couples build less together and don’t want to overcome difficulties”, she considers.

Jonet feels that today’s form of consumer society has stopped valuing the “cost of opportunity” – the concept is directly related to the premise that resources are scarce.

“And in Portugal, I don’t think the economic relevance of the euro has been completely understood. In this aspect, I think that the euro was a factor that induced poverty – because people lost their understanding of money”.

As for the future, Jonet believes the second half of 2012 will be particularly difficult. But she’s sees a light at the end of the tunnel. “The worst thing that could happen to us would be a waiving of debt, as happened with Greece. We’d be excluded from the financial markets for 10-20 years. We could completely lose credibility and no-one would ever lend us money again”.

“Every one of us has to find resilience for the tough times that are on their way. We don’t need this madness of consumer goods” but we should be looking at life differently, and making use once more of the things that we have.

Goodwill numbers

In 2010, the 19 branches of BA distributed more than 27.000 tons of food, to the value of 36 million euros. “Just to give you an idea, everyday an average of 100 tons of food left the Lisbon BA warehouse”.

Most of these products (excesses in production) would have been destroyed for purely commercial reasons. “Last week we had the case of a consignment of tinned tuna, produced to satisfy an order for Angola – but at the last moment, the importer reneged on the deal, and the producing firm would have destroyed everything.

They were about to claim the loss back on their insurance, and the whole lot would have gone into the rubbish”. But this didn’t happen because one of the insurance people thought of BA, and placed a call. In the middle of November, “36.000 volunteers, in an organised way” up and down the country, will be back on the streets collecting food at supermarkets. “We have to maintain the feeling that we’re part of a whole. Nobody lives alone in the world. If we can manage this, we’ll all win” concluded Isabel Jonet.

http://www.bancoalimentar.pt/