FOOD PROJECT
Every month, we provide food packs for over 2000 people.
Food distribution focused on dignity and autonomy
The food project addresses the urgent and ongoing issue of food insecurity affecting over 2,000 people on the move at any given time in Calais. These individuals, stranded at the border and largely unsupported by the state, face severe challenges in meeting their basic needs. Living in precarious conditions like makeshift tents or abandoned buildings, they endure harassment and lack access to safe, dignified services. In particular, there is a significant lack of food support that is respectful of individual autonomy and cultural needs.
CFC provides cooking ingredients, such as rice, pasta, fresh vegetables, tinned goods, spices, tea and also sponges and washing-up liquid. We deliver these supplies directly to people’s living spaces, enabling access to nutritious food that promotes independence, giving people on the move the autonomy and dignity to prepare their own meals.
CFC’s work exists within a deeply hostile and neglectful context, aiming to restore a measure of dignity and independence by ensuring that people have the resources they need to cook for themselves - on their own terms. At a time when people on the move are often met with criminalisation and indifference, this project dares to offer something radically simple: the tools and resources to cook a meal. This act, while seemingly basic, becomes profoundly political in a context where even access to food is restricted, policed, or weaponised. By enabling individuals to cook for themselves, the project supports both immediate needs and long-term wellbeing.
Rejecting top-down aid, CFC’s food project takes a grassroots, community-first approach that centres autonomy and respect. CFC works directly with people on the move, shaping the project around their feedback and preferences. This participatory model challenges the power dynamics often present in humanitarian aid, replacing control with collaboration. By simply providing basic cooking ingredients, we promote nourishment as a form of resistance and self-expression. Grounded in community feedback and led by volunteers, the project challenges traditional aid power dynamics, offering a humane, collaborative model rooted in solidarity, not saviourism.
We believe that cooking can be a powerful act of agency and connection. It creates a sense of normalcy, ownership, and joy - especially in environments where individuals often feel disempowered and displaced. CFC’s project offers a form of resistance and resilience by creating safe, self-directed spaces through food.
Currently, CFC operates across 5 living sites. We distribute over 200 food packs weekly, supported entirely by a team of full-time volunteers based in Calais.
THE FUNDING CONTEXT
Help us pay for food
It has become increasingly difficult to sustain the level of material support needed in Calais, especially when it comes to the food project. Some major funders have pulled out of Calais in recent years - highlighting the need for our collaboration with other grassroots groups, Calais Appeal.
We receive surplus food from Banque Alimentaire with a small monthly subscription and we always try to find more local partnerships to receive food.
But for many of the most basic items people need for cooking, we can’t rely on donations and instead have to purchase bulk pallets.
£15 pays for a food pack for a group of five people for a week. That’s all the most essential items for them to cook with, like tinned tomatoes and beans, oil, rice and pasta.
Please consider donating if you can!
