Why teaching a man how to fish wont solve food poverty

[Music]

give a man a fish

he eats for a day teach him how to fish

he eats for a lifetime

simple right but what if

that man or woman for that matter hadn’t

eaten

in three days and was too hungry to

learn how to fish

or what if they couldn’t get hold of a

fishing rod or had

no fuel to cook the fish and what if

they don’t even

like to eat fish perhaps

not so simple today i’m going to share

with you my story

and what i’ve learned from working

closely with people

experiencing food poverty my story

begins in lebanon as a student studying

to become a dietitian

at that time war in my home country

syria was unfolding

and my walks to class would become

distracted by news on social media

trying to find out

how many lives have we lost today and

how many homes

have been destroyed this week and by

unanswered questions that i still have

to this day like what

have i done to deserve to be safe

right now and what can i do to fix this

i was desperate to use my skills to help

and that’s what led me

to my first job at an organization that

was supporting

syrian refugees arriving to lebanon as a

dietitian i was to focus

on what they’re eating and i spent the

first few weeks

on the job looking at research and

resources trying to understand what are

some of the challenges the refugees

typically struggle with

and what are some of the meaningful

helpful solutions that i could help with

and i thought because i was syrian it

was going to help

i was going to build a connection with

them and get that message across

more easily

one day is particularly etched in my

memory

it was the day i met bassima a 52 year

old woman who welcomed me into her tent

where she was hosting one of her usual

social gatherings

and it was one of the first times that

i’d had the chance to sit down with a

group of women and talk to them about

what they’re eating

this time we were talking about the food

vouchers they were receiving and what a

good

balanced food shop might look like

i went through all of the information i

had and they were really kind and

generous

they even offered me tea even though it

was one of the few things they had

i got to the end any questions i asked

silence and then a

flood of questions like

can you help us get running water or

toilets installed

i’ve been feeding my baby tea for the

past six weeks can you

help us get formula

i it was

it was like we were having two different

conversation i felt

overwhelmed paralyzed even and mostly

frustrated that i couldn’t help that

this wasn’t my remit

i tried to explain that and basima

turned to me and said

habibti sweetheart

you’re welcome here anytime we really

enjoyed having you but your

advice doesn’t work for us how can

someone like you

understand what we are going through

and i realized she was right i didn’t

understand

even though i too assyrian and i too had

been forced to leave home

are at our experience of that was very

different

i was an expert in my subject not

in their lives and even though some of

what i knew could help

it wasn’t what they wanted or needed

at that time

a few months later and as the war

worsened my husband and i made a very

hard decision one of

the hardest in our lives to leave

everything behind

and moved to london and my first job

here was supporting

young homeless people and again as a

dietitian i was to support them with

what they’re eating

and i was really excited about this role

i i thought it was going to be easier

after all i’d been toughened up by my

previous experience there was a robust

health and social care system in the uk

that was supporting

this group and this was a really

creative and innovative approach we

did lots of cooking and food shopping

with young people

but for a lot of young people that i

worked with my

no matter how creative i got with my

block of six sessions

something just didn’t feel right young

people came to me with a weight

of the world on their shoulders and it

often felt like i was

handing them a flimsy umbrella

and asking them to walk through the

storm that is their life

and keep dry

i remember sitting down with ben to work

out his food budget for the week

and coming to minus three pounds

and jess who was in disbelief to

know that she could take home the

shepherd’s pie we’d cooked together and

the three

leftover potatoes that we didn’t use in

the session

she said that that was going to get her

through the week

this happened with young people over and

over again and

it soon became clear that the food the

young people were taking away was the

reason they were coming to the session

at all and i felt like i was back in

that tent

with the group of women in lebanon

feeling frustrated and overwhelmed that

what i was here to do wasn’t what they

wanted or needed at that time

so i needed some answers so i naturally

went back to the books to the evidence

that would perhaps

give me some guidance

and i was surprised there was very

little there

this issue of food poverty and this

group young homeless people was very

underrepresented in research so

we decided to do it ourselves and we did

lots of surveys

and interviews to get to the bottom of

what this group actually

needed from us and the results

were shocking

in the prior month 60 percent of our

young people

had skipped meals or gone to sleep

hungry

because they had no money

in one of the interviews a young person

said i’d be hungry but i wouldn’t eat

because i knew if i ate any more today i

would have nothing

left tomorrow i had to ration

my food

i’d expected this group to need some

support with budgeting or

some tips on cooking for less but

nothing nothing had prepared me for the

level

of food poverty they were experiencing

and while i knew that food poverty is a

global issue it touches millions of

people’s lives around the world

i was shocked that it was happening here

in the uk

one of the richest countries in the

world

and angry that it was happening as the

food industry

throws away 250 000 tons

of food that’s good quality and edible

each year that’s enough to feed a meal

to the uk population almost 10

times over

do you remember the last time you had to

delay your lunch

perhaps a meeting ran over

and you were running late didn’t have

time to grab a sandwich

we often joke about the feeling of being

hangry the combination of hunger

and anger now imagine that feeling

on repeat indefinitely

when someone’s hungry for a long period

of time not only are they

more nutritionally at risk their immune

system becomes more at risk their mental

health suffers it’s

hard to concentrate and remember things

energy is slow as

the body switching to survival mode

and while that is a really useful

adaptation if we were facing a famine

there is no place for it in our world

today

so why was no one around me talking

about this

how were we expecting young people to go

to things like math classes and english

classes that we put on

when they were hungry

food poverty in the uk is

real and it’s on the rise

and we cannot talk about food poverty

without

talking about the wider issue of poverty

in the uk

and let me share with you some numbers

to get this issue into perspective

in the uk nine children in a classroom

of 30

are in poverty one in five adults

is experiencing some level of food

insecurity from worrying about food

all the way to going full days without

eating

and in this past year alone 700

000 people have been pushed into poverty

and these

numbers are rising

and you’ll find

a few official definitions of what

poverty means and they’re usually along

the lines of

not having the financial means for a

minimum standard of living

but let me share with you what poverty

really means to the people i worked with

poverty is having to make hard decisions

on a daily basis like whether to

heat your home or feed your children

poverty is feeling anxious at the till

unsure whether or not you’ve got enough

money to pay for your groceries

it’s feeling guilty for having to tuck

your children

in bed on an empty stomach it’s being

in a constant state of crisis thinking

about the here

and now and having no head space to

think about your future

poverty is feeling

excluded and constantly judged by others

for what you can

and cannot buy and it’s feeling

frustrated at a system that has failed

you and is

constantly making you feel like it’s

your

fault poverty

is knowing that you’re on the wrong side

of

injustice and that there’s nothing

you’ve done to deserve this and nothing

you could have done to prevent it

so what was our role in tackling

all of this how can i help james the 19

year old who in the past week has seen

his

social worker support worker gp

therapist

and now me his dietitian and is still

going to sleep hungry

and what about lana who yes would rather

go hungry than go to the nearest

food bank where she might run into her

abusive

ex-boyfriend these questions

would keep me up at night and vasima’s

words

would ring in my memory your advice

doesn’t work for us

it felt like we held one small piece

of a big complex puzzle and without

finding the rest of those pieces

we had no chance at making a meaningful

difference

so our now team of two dietitians were

on a mission we wanted our young people

to be eating well

and with dignity and we wanted a zero

tolerance to hunger in our organization

and we went out and had a conversation

with anybody that would talk to us

our colleagues researchers food waste

charities

and most importantly the young people

that were experiencing this

together we started to come up with

solutions

to think about how things could be

different

and while we didn’t always agree and had

to navigate lots of ifs and buts and

jump through

many bureaucratic hoops it

finally felt like those pieces of the

puzzle were coming together and the

picture

was becoming clearer

and the result a social supermarket

we transformed one of our kitchens to

a supermarket we stocked the shelves up

with

food that’s been rescued by food waste

charities good quality

fresh frozen and long life food

young people volunteers and dietitians

ran the shop

together and next door we had a space

for young

for people to sit down and have a meal

together

we even had a michelin star chef

volunteer

and what started as a way to provide

access to good quality food to this

group

became something far greater this was

a safe space where young people could

come as they are no judgment

no expectations this was about

connection

inclusion choice and dignity

young people’s eyes lit up when they

were handed a shopping basket

and it made a real difference to lots of

people’s lives from

those young people who regained weight

they’d lost after

months of being malnourished to others

who fell in love with cooking and

started

and even took it up as a career

my favorite moments were when young

people tried new things for the first

time like

tom who at 19 tried butternut squash for

the first time and loved it and started

to make it every week

and amani who tried dried apricots for

the first time at 19

and hated them she was still happy she

tried them at least now

she had an opinion about it she said

we found that we were at capacity each

week and we left physically exhausted

but our hearts

full to see and hear the difference

that the supermarket was making

now i’m not here to say that a social

supermarket is the answer to food

poverty this

isn’t a long-term solution nor does it

tackle the root causes of food poverty

this is a solution that worked for this

group

at that point in time and working on it

gave me a great

deal of clarity it made me question

where we tend to look for answers for

those complex problems that our world

faces like

food poverty groups

like homeless people and refugees are

often

labeled and singled out as having

complex needs

and that’s always made me uncomfortable

people are complex we all are that’s

what makes us human

and tackling issues that touch human

lives so closely like the

food we eat should account for that

today i work in an innovation foundation

bringing people together in all their

wonderful complexity

to come up with solutions to problems

that our world faces like

food poverty and i’ve seen firsthand

the power of that i now know

that those moms those women in the

refugee camp

held a piece of the puzzle that no one

else holds

and so does each of you whether you’re a

researcher

a practitioner a chief exec a

policymaker

you cannot tackle this challenge on your

own

and others cannot tackle it without you

so let’s use our collective power

to tackle food poverty with

the complexity and humanity that it

needs

and i’m asking you from the bottom of my

heart three things

firstly find the food poverty that’s

hiding

in plain sight in your community

understand how many people you’re

interacting with on a day-to-day basis

that are worrying about their next meal

secondly figure out what you can do

about this

whether it’s having a different kind of

conversation supporting your

local food bank or rewriting the rules

we need all of it and finally

unlock the power of having people

like bassima lana james and amani

around the table people with lived

experience

who are the unrivaled experts

in their lives thank you