BACKGROUND

La Botiga (The Shop) is a food guarantee, community empowerment and sustainability project, which arose as a response to traditional food distribution strategies in the face of food insecurity situations suffered by the most impoverished groups in the community. It is a project that evolves towards self-management, as the goal of a government model, and that is articulated on two major axes: the social and the environmental. La Botiga is organized in a self-service and/or assisted sales model. There are products preferably from food reuse and the local market, where organic, seasonal, and local products will prevail. In this sense, it is a model of food guarantee that starts from an emancipatory logic, of community empowerment and that does not stigmatize the users, since they are the ones who carry the service. A groundbreaking model and different from that assumed by most municipalities in the EU, which work from a final service logic based on cash register cheques. At this point, it is necessary to ask which of the two models brings more benefits to citizens. To find it out, it is necessary to measure the different social impacts that each of them has.

GOAL

How could we know the real impact that this service model has on the community providing evidence of the transformative benefits of its implementation? We must consider the context in which we will find ourselves from next September, when the European Union will close the European Aid Fund for the Neediest (FEAD), relegating all food policy to cash checks.

CHALLENGE PROVIDERS

Stakeholder: el Prat de Llobregat City Council

Hosting University: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona