Humanitarian employee Mike Penrose on the ‘Food from Ukraine’ program – Tête à tête | EUROtoday

Penrose has been working with RIDNE, a Ukrainian meals consortium made up of small to medium-sized meals producers that now supplies provides to the Ukrainian humanitarian meals market. Despite battling the Russian invasion, “Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe”, Penrose stated. He defined that RIDNE gathered collectively the producers and “allowed them to trade at scale to actually meet the needs of large-scale aid organisations”.

As a end result, “over 80 percent of all food aid being delivered by aid agencies in Ukraine is sourced in Ukraine”, that means that “the people who are most vulnerable from the economic shock of the war (…) can now benefit economically from the aid that needs to be delivered,” Penrose stated.

‘The programme works equally nicely in Africa’

The initiative did not cease there, and RIDNE not too long ago discovered that “the programme (…) established in Ukraine works equally well in Africa”, Penrose stated, following the launch of a regional meals distribution hub in Accra, the capital of Ghana.

“When you buy the food, it goes to producers who need it in Africa or in Ukraine. And when you distribute it, it goes to the most vulnerable people who are dependent on food aid”, in international locations reminiscent of Sudan, Somalia, areas of the Sahel and DR Congo, as an alternative of being “lost into large agro-industry”, Penrose defined.

Increasing ‘the worth of the help that is being distributed’

Asked concerning the UN’s World Food Programme and main NGOs, Penrose declared that the “Food from Ukraine” mannequin is best as a result of “it takes people out of that loop of vulnerability and really increases the value of the aid that’s being distributed”.

Penrose addressed help cuts from the US but additionally Europe and their influence on meals distribution, saying that in an “era of diminishing amounts of money, where we have increasing need”, this programme “ensures that you get absolute maximum value out of the money we have” and it “helps both the countries that are supplying the aid, which are crisis-affected like Ukraine, and those that receive it”.

‘Political braveness’ wanted to interrupt Abramovich funds impasse

The veteran humanitarian employee additionally mentioned the dispute between the British authorities and Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, whose £2.35 billion from the sale of Chelsea Football Club are at the moment frozen and may solely be used for humanitarian functions in Ukraine, in response to London, one thing that Abramovich refuses.

“Humanitarian programmes are global. The impact of wars around the world are global. Limiting it to one geographic boundary doesn’t actually even help countries like Ukraine in the best possible way,” Penrose declared.

“I just think we need some political courage to break this deadlock and ensure that the money comes to the foundation,” he concluded.