An initiative to correct the disequilibrium between #FoodWaste and the Homeless Hangry Moroccan Population

45.1% of all food in Morocco goes to waste, while 7 Million people live under the poverty line, 30 thousand children live in the streets, and many struggling to ensure a meal for their families. 

The Moroccan society has been passively witnessing its people fighting against hunger. Middle aged men and women carrying a child or more, and younger girls and boys who have made a shelter out of corners of the street, engage every day in a hunt for 'leftovers'. Like birds they scan garbage cans every time the hunger voice is louder than what they can entertain.

Social injustice? or simple disequilibrium between those who have too much and those who have less than the necessary to maintain a decent life?

Thinking on these lines reminds me of the saying that "we tend to blame society forgetting that we are society". If those people are still to this day struggling to access 'food', it is the responsibility of each and everyone of us. 

At times I find myself thinking that there should be someone to do something for the marginalized amongst us. And I tend to omit the idea that the 'someone' could be anyone. It could me, or you reading me through these lines, or anyone for whom life turned out to be more than a daily struggle to survive. And then I change the focus from 'who is the someone that can do something?' to 'what is the something that can be done?' and ideas start to come...

An idea as simple as modifying the food distribution cycle seems to have a potential to change something for the better for the struggling-against-its-faith Moroccan homeless population. And you, wherever you are in this world, can take part in that.

How is that ever possible?

Currently, individuals, restaurants and supermarkets dispose of leftovers through garbage cans, which become the destination for the hungry homeless looking for crumbs to quiet their hungry stomachs. 

A study conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of The United Nation attested that 45.1% of all food in Morocco goes to waste. And considering the study by the US Department of Agriculture attesting that an average person eats nearly a Ton of food over the course of one year, we can approximate the quantity of food consumed yearly by the 35 Million Moroccans at 35 Million Tones. And thus, the amount of wasted food in Morocco can be estimated at 15 Million Tone per year. 

Breaking this cycle and collecting food before it transforms into waste could be of a good way to ensure a warm, decent and clean meal for the 7 Million Moroccans living under the poverty line. 

Now the question becomes, how can we break this cycle? How can we ensure an intervention in the interface between food-wasters and garbage cans?

The French government has the answer. 

In the beginning of 2016, the French government voted a law that prohibits food waste and obliges supermarkets to donate unsold food to charities and food banks. Initiated by the councillor Arash Derambarsh and signed by over 200 000 people, the petition had became a law that would ensure an estimated 10 Millions of food per year. 

A similar campaign is currently lunched to expand the law across Europe, and through these lines, I join the movement and humbly advocate to lunch a campaign for the Moroccan homeless population, by prohibiting the Moroccan restaurants and supermarkets from disposing their unsold food and rather donate it to charities and food banks. 

This would be a first step of what I believe might be an initiative of a larger perspective. Having this law in place, we can lunch a mobile application to facilitate the food distribution in Morocco. 

Individuals, restaurants and supermarkets can log in to indicate the possession of leftovers, and then transporters can log in to collect and distribute the food to the hungry amongst us. 

I believe that together we can help, together we can change our society for the better, and together, we can ensure warm, clean and decent meals for the 30 thousand Moroccan homeless children.

And you, by a simple click, can engage in making it possible. 

So sign, share and help provide a meal for those struggling to have one. 

Link to the petition: https://www.change.org/p/stop-food-waste