Our intervention in Ile de France - Action contre la Faim

Faced with increasing precariousness and inequality, non-use and barriers to access to rights and food, Action Against Hunger has launched its intervention in France, starting in the Ile-de-France region, in 2019.

Its guiding principle: to make its humanitarian expertise available to those involved in helping the most precarious people, and to act alongside them to aim for operational and structural change.

Ile-de-France is the richest region in France (21% of GDP), but there are major disparities between and within departments. In 2017, 15.3% of the Ile-de-France population lived below the poverty line (national average 14.1% in 2017). The combined effects of the Covid-19 crisis, the Russian-Ukrainian crisis and the inflationary context have had a considerable impact on the most vulnerable people, particularly in terms of food. Against this backdrop, those involved in the fight against food insecurity are facing with multiple challenges: diversification of the profiles and needs of those seeking help, increasing barriers to access to essential rights and non-use of services, decreasing resources and increasing numbers of active files, and a crisis in the social professions. The Fédération du Secours Populaire de Paris notes that since the health crisis, the number of people receiving material aid has risen by 42%, as the public has become much more diverse and precarious. A number of new structures have even been set up since the health crisis: MaMaMa for early childhood, COP’1 for students. All the players, both old and new to the Paris region, are expressing a real desire to improve their actions and find innovative, collective and flexible solutions to best meet the needs of the public they welcome and support.

Action Against Hunger has been working for over 3 years with the various players involved in food aid and the fight against precariousness and exclusion, to better cover the essential needs, including food, of people who are the furthest from services. By acting on barriers to access to food, in a multi-sectoral approach, Action Against Hunger aims to bring about changes at the levels of field actions, territories and local and national public policies.

Passerelle - Valentina Camu 2022 (1)-min

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Our actions

Working in the field with our partners and documenting barriers to access to food:

Action Against Hunger goes out to meet the people supported by the associations in order to get to know them better and understand the constraints they face in covering their basic needs and accessing their essential rights. Through field surveys, Action Against Hunger asks the people supported by the associations about their practices and their food security, their health, their well-being, their access to information and their rights, etc. Thanks to these surveys, Action Against Hunger is able to draw up findings and operational recommendations with its partner associations.

Developing and co-constructing learning projects with other solidarity actors:

Action Against Hunger teams up with other actors in the field and in research to co-construct pilot projects, test and document new aid methods better suited to the most precarious populations, and feed into changes in public policy. The Passerelle project, carried out in 2022, is a good example of this, as it was co-constructed with La Fondation de l’Armée du Salut, and enabled us to set up an individualized monetary transfer and social support for 200 households in precarious situations over a 4-month period in Montreuil.

Support collective and regional reflection and action:

In conjunction with its partners, Action Against Hunger participates in various forums for exchange (e.g., co-leading a working group in 2022 on food insecurity among exiles), coordination (support and participation in inter-associative coordination for exiles, support and participation in working groups on food aid led by the City of Paris, etc.). ACF facilitates the exchange of expertise and best practices between players involved in access to food, and co-produces and/or shares multi-actor studies on the issues of precariousness, access to rights and access to food. For example, in 2021, 9 associations, including Action Against Hunger, published the survey report “Les oubliés du droit d’asile” (“Those forgotten by the right of asylum”), which draws an alarming picture of the undignified conditions in which exiled people live, as well as the barriers they face in accessing their rights and services in Paris. In light of these findings, the associations agreed on a series of recommendations.

Nourishing public policies and co-constructing advocacy actions for access to sustainable food for all:

Action Against Hunger disseminates studies to gain a better understanding of needs and barriers to access to food, and co-constructs proposals to change operational practices and public policies so that France can guarantee access to healthy, sustainable, quality food for all.

Our partners

La Fondation de l’Armée du Salut, La Chorba, MaMaMa, Cop’1, le Refettorio, la Ville de Paris, Secours Populaire Français – Paris, France Terre d’Asile, Watizat, la Fédération des Acteurs de la Solidarité – Ile-de-France, l’Observatoire du Samusocial de Paris

Project examples

Passerelle in Montreuil

The health crisis of 2020 exacerbated social inequalities and gave rise to new situations of precariousness. In Montreuil, Action Against Hunger and the Fondation de l’Armée du Salut, with the support of the INRAE Unité Mixte de Recherche Moisa, have set up the Passerelle scheme to address issues that go beyond food insecurity, such as access to healthcare, employment and debt recovery. A 4-month cash transfer was set up for 843 people (200 households), coupled with individualized social guidance to ensure a relay of information on their rights and proposals for social guidance. This scheme was designed to provide a response as close as possible to people’s needs, making them active and autonomous in their spending choices. The project’s individualized guidance work has helped to mitigate the effects of precariousness by adopting an “outreach” approach, meeting people in social centers as close as possible to their homes.

MaMaMa : Taking better account of children’s precarious living conditions

The MaMaMa association was founded during the first week of confinement, in April 2020, to help mothers with children under 3 in precarious situations, in Saint-Denis. Every month, MaMaMa distributes tailor-made solidarity parcels to over 500 families, made up of essential food and hygiene products for their children under 3, as well as essential products for the children’s well-being and hygiene products for the mothers. MaMaMa also relies on a network of maternal and child welfare centers (PMI), social workers and associations, to whom it delivers or distributes parcels for the families supported by these structures.

In 2022, Action Against Hunger carried out a survey among the families helped by the MaMaMa association, to better understand their profiles, needs and practices in terms of food and child nutrition. This survey demonstrated the essential role played by MaMaMa for the families it supports, as it often represents the main or even sole source of supply of specific early childhood products for these particularly vulnerable families. Today, Action Against Hunger is continuing this work with MaMaMa by helping it to implement the operational and methodological recommendations resulting from the survey report, in order to feed MaMaMa’s strategic thinking as it scales up its association and deploys its projects.

« La Cocotte » : A shared kitchen for people hosted in hotel

Following a call for projects from France Relance “Creation and development of third places promoting access to food for people housed in hotels”, the Fondation de l’Armée du Salut opened La Cocotte, a shared kitchen in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, in July 2022 for a period of two years, with the support of Action Against Hunger. Every week, this fully-equipped kitchen welcomes around 30 people staying in hotels in and around the 18th arrondissement of Paris, to cook for a 2-hour period. People can come and cook with their children, for whom a play area and activities are provided. They can also take part in workshops on a variety of themes, including parenting, nutrition and film debates. Action Against Hunger supported the launch of La Cocotte by helping the Fondation de l’Armée du Salut to create monitoring and project management tools, and by working alongside FADS and Samu social 75 to present the project in hotels. In May 2023, Action Against Hunger carried out a survey of people using La Cocotte, in order to assess the impact of La Cocotte one year after its opening and to identify avenues of reflection for diversifying the aid provided as close as possible to people’s needs.

Art & Food : a cultural breakfast event

Since 2021, La Chorba and the Fondation de l’Armée du Salut, 2 well-established food aid providers in Paris, have been offering people in vulnerable situations a time of conviviality during the winter break, with a breakfast to be eaten on site and a packed lunch to take away in Parisian cultural centers. During breakfast, people can benefit from privileged access to cultural activities and, for some of the most vulnerable, individualized social guidance. The scheme, named Art & Food in 2023, was deployed for the first time in winter 2020/2021 at the Gaité Lyrique, then in winter 2021/2022 at 4 additional cultural venues: the Maison des Pratiques Artistiques Amateurs (MP2A), the Canopée media library, the Forum des Images and the Centre Pompidou. The scheme reopened in December 2022 for a 3rd edition, which was continued beyond the winter break thanks to public and private funding, this time including new cultural venues: the Eglise Saint-Eustache, the Bourse du Commerce and Lafayette Anticipation. In March 2022, Action Against Hunger, in conjunction with the Observatoire du Samu Social de Paris, carried out a final survey of the project, which led to a series of recommendations for improving the quality of the aid provided in the light of the renewal at the end of 2022. The survey also demonstrated the relevance and interest of perpetuating this innovative scheme by strengthening the social component and extending its weekly coverage. Action Against Hunger is currently working with La Chorba and the Fondation de l’Armée du Salut to mobilize funding to establish Art & Food over the long term, and to support those involved in setting up a system for monitoring and evaluating the scheme, integrating the social work dimension.

Key figures

Between 2020 and 2021, our action enabled us to directly reach 3,504 precarious people to cover their basic needs, particularly in terms of hygiene. The team carried out 7 surveys with 7 different partners and was in contact with a total of 40 operational partners in the Ile-de-France region. In addition, 747 people were trained between January and December 2021 via these various training courses – 58 training sessions.

Key figures for 2022 :

7 projects supported, targeting 2,316 people
Nearly 50,000 people, publics supported by our partners, indirectly impacted by our actions
1,183 people received kits containing various necessities
10 presentations of work carried out by Action Against Hunger in Paris and the Ile-de-France region
421 employees and/or volunteers trained
22 working tools/documents created, adapted and shared

Find all of our survey and diagnostic reports