The National Day of Giving Day (NDG), which is for the fourth time being organized on October 9, is this year fully dedicated to food donations and is endorsed through the ongoing campaign "Save Food, Save Humanity". On this occasion, one month prior to the NDG, a crowdfunding call for action has been initiated, to provide citizens of Serbia with an opportunity to give their monetary contributions which will be used for food donations to the most vulnerable citizens.
All monetary donations collected through this initiative will be used to buy essential food items to be delivered in boxes to the most vulnerable citizens, through partner organizations: Red Cross of Serbia, Food Bank Belgrade, Federation of Food Banks of Serbia, Foundation SOS Children’s Villages Serbia, Foundation “Humano srce Šapca” and ADRA.
“Through the campaign “Save Food, Save Humanity” we are pointing out to the problem of large food waste and insufficient food donations in our country, and so far the support from the citizens has been very good. Now, citizens can also join through this crowdfunding initiative that we started ahead of the National Giving Day,” said Veran Matić, Director of the Serbian Philanthropy Forum.
In Serbia, almost half a million people (seven percent of the population) live on the edge of absolute poverty, and many of them depend on food donations, while on the other side an estimated two million kilograms of food are being wasted daily. While the campaign “Save Food, Save Humanity” is raising awareness of this problem and is trying to gather stakeholders from different sectors to improve the ecosystem for food donations, on the National Giving Day, citizens and companies will be able to engage in specific food donation activities. Citizens and companies can visit the page www.spasimohranu.rs for more information and to engage.
So far, the campaign “Save Food, Save Humanity” has been supported by Delhaize, Lidl, Glovo, DM, Nestle, AmCham, the Hemofarm Foundation, Eurobank, Erste Bank, the law office Živković-Samardžić, Gecić Law Office, BlackRock, Elixir Group, , FoodScaleHub,,NALED, Carnex and MK Group and the support of an even larger number of companies and organizations is expected.
The National Day of Giving and the campaign "Save Food, Save Humanity" are being implemented as part of the Framework for Giving project, implemented by the Coalition for Giving, led by the Ana and Vlade Divac Foundation. Other members of the Coalition are the Trag Foundation, Catalyst Balkans, SMART Kolektiv, the Serbian Philanthropy Forum, the Responsible Business Forum, and the Serbian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
For more information about the campaign "Save Food, Save Humanity" and ways to get involved, please visit the website: http://spasimohranu.rs/