How Lagos Foodbank Initiative feeds 3.5m households
Feeding more than 3.5 million households in 9 years can never be said to be easy. It requires hard work, passion and empathy. But that is what Michael Sunbola has been doing since 2016 in Lagos and its environs through his Lagos Foodbank Initiative. In an interview with Daily Trust, Sunbola, the executive director of […]
Sunbola
Feeding more than 3.5 million households in 9 years can never be said to be easy. It requires hard work, passion and empathy. But that is what Michael Sunbola has been doing since 2016 in Lagos and its environs through his Lagos Foodbank Initiative. In an interview with Daily Trust, Sunbola, the executive director of the non-profit, private-driven initiative, said he was committed to fighting malnutrition and hunger through targeted programmes that seek to improve nutrition and food intake for pregnant women and their infants, students in public primary and secondary schools and youths in underserved communities.
“The vision of the food bank was born out of the high rate of hunger and malnutrition we have seen in our society and the fact that over 130million of our population are multi-dimensionally poor and the level of malnutrition is really baffling,” he said.
The lawyer-turned-humanitarian food advocate described the initiative as a social net programme that thrives in developed countries.
“More than two million children are severely malnourished in many families. High cost of living, food inflation and all these factors drive a sizable level of hunger. People are going through a lot.
“The question I asked at the time was: “How come there are so many of them in the US and we don’t have them here? Those were the questions that initiated the idea of a food bank, which started in 2016, operating for a decade now and have been on a journey of helping to restore hope and dignity to vulnerable families,” he noted.
He explained that the initiative fed over 160 rural and underserved communities, informal settlements and low-income communities in Lagos.
“Since the inception of this programme, we have done more than 3.5million; and it was not just a one-off intervention. A lot of those women have their cards, which are marked when they collect. And thousands are still on the queue.
“Lagos is a state with over 25million population. Arguably, people might say it is urban, but Lagos is one of the most food insecure states in Nigeria because of the population and number of people who emigrate from other states,” he said.
He said the non-governmental organisation had partnered with over 150 organisations in Lagos and begun to expand to other states with the spread of its agricultural recovery hubs.
“Because of the level of poverty here, we felt like concentrating in Lagos. However, as the vision began, we saw the need to expand. We have been able to partner with over 150 non-profit organisations in Lagos and outside to spread the impact of our work. We are also doing a lot of agricultural recovery hubs in other states. We also serve as a model for other nonprofit organisations to scale what we are doing. So, they see Lagos Foodbank working and they are able to replicate it in their states. Our impact cuts across the entire country,” he said.
He emphasised the need for partnerships from the government and more corporate organisations in a bid to deepen the reach of its distribution to other demographics, including visually impaired men.
“Now, the programme focuses more on women because we have very little resources to work with. We are not in partnership with the government yet. And for the men, we work with visually impaired, physically challenged. So, whatever the women collect, they take it home and feed their family, including their husbands.
“That’s where our resources can get to at this time. Hopefully, when we get to partner more with the government or other bigger development institutions, we could extend the reach to more people,” he said.
Daily Trust recalls that casualties have been recorded in most instances during food distribution, leaving a lot of people injured during stampedes, and in some cases, a number of deaths.
He highlighted how stampedes are avoided or curtailed during food distribution, saying beneficiaries are registered before distribution of the food items.
“We register the beneficiaries before bringing an intervention to their community.
“Identify the people you want to reach and reach out to those ones. The ones that don’t have your card or are not registered are not eligible. That’s how I have been doing it for a decade now,” he explained.
He expressed concern over the cut in funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), saying it has affected some of their donors, leading to shortage of donations.
“We have been working with individuals who support and donate, as well as corporate partners. We also work with grants we have a bit of access to,” he added.
According to him, the organisation has 40 employees and 30,000 volunteers.
He identified the challenge confronting the organisation thus: “More demand, little resources are the overall challenge we face, but we have been able to surmount that with a multi-dimensional approach; and different stakeholders are now involved in helping us get resources.
“With the system we built, we are able to get resources from different stakeholders. But there is still more demand vis-a-vis the resources available to reach them.
“Basically, the future plan to scale up this initiative is for us to expand our reach to more countries through the agricultural recovery programme. It is something we want to scale across the entire country by having different agricultural recovery hubs.
“We want to work with more non-profit organisations to scale this impact across Nigeria. We want to work with the government to further impact or expand our impact. There is a limit to what we can do by ourselves. With the government coming, we can do so much more and reach more people transparently and in a more accountable way.
“I would say that it is really humbling and encouraging seeing that our work has been noticed. But I would not take credit for this. A tree doesn’t make a forest. I would give the credit to my team, our volunteers, over 30,000 of them, the different stories of the beneficiaries we serve, and our partners. They all have come together to make this a reality. I will give that credit to them,” he said.
Funke Edema, who benefitted from a farming empowerment programme organised by the Lagos Foodbank Initiative, described the training as one that set her path for financial independence.
“The Foodbank Initiative came to our place and taught us about poultry farming and snail rearing business. They promised to buy us crates to start the business with,” she said.
Also, Mrs Akinpelu, who brought her baby, Halimat for the nutrition programme, said her baby gained weight after she started coming for checkup and to receive baby food.
“When I brought my child, she was weighed 1.8kg, but after few weeks, she gained weight and now weighs 6.2kg. I come for checkup every two weeks and I am given baby food on every visit. I really want to appreciate the Foodbank Initiative for this support,” she said.