As the gap grows between the have and have-nots, food poverty is one of the most pressing issues of our time. In the UK, there has been an astronomical rise in the number of people needing to access food banks - something which arguably didn’t exist a decade ago. According to the Trussell Trust, the charity provided 1,182,954 three-day emergency food supplies to people in crisis between April 2016 and March 2017, compared with 1,109,309 the previous year - a rise of 7%.
Rather depressingly, the number of people needing to use the service includes many from all walks of life; single people, married couples, families, those who are unemployed and rather staggeringly, a significant number of those who are working – typically in low paid, part-time and insecure employment.
In recent years there has also been a rise in the number of initiatives designed to tackle food poverty particularly amongst children and young people such as school run breakfast clubs and community run holiday hunger clubs.
In honour of UN World Food Day, we wanted to highlight three black women who are responding to the need in a range of creative and innovative ways.
Hortense Julienne, The Bank Cook
Hortense Julienne is the creator of the Bank Cook, a recipe book which utilises ingredients from food bank packages and transforming them into sumptuous, nutritious meals.
The self-confessed French foodie (via Cameroon) birthed the idea out of her passion to give dignity to people on very low incomes and by her Christian faith.