WILLEMSTAD - “Since this week we have again received about a hundred new registrations per day for our food packages,” says Coraline Kooistra of the Crisis Bank, an initiative of the Foundation Against Child Abuse to offer help to families and people in need on Curaçao.
"Since the Red Cross no longer provides food aid and new people are no longer accepted at the Food Bank, my phone has been ringing off the hook again."
Last week, the Red Cross indicated that it would no longer coordinate food aid, which was realized with finances from the Netherlands. This would be replaced by a structural solution from 1 May in collaboration with the Ministry of Social Development, Labor and Welfare (SOAW). Many people do not yet know what this help will look like and how they can claim it. In the meantime, these people are therefore dependent on initiatives such as those of the Crisis Bank for food.
“During the first lockdown last year, I received phone calls from people who were hungry and needed a food package,” says Kooistra. When the food parcels were scaled up by the Food Bank and the Red Cross also started providing food aid, the requests dropped. Kooistra: “I have noticed that for a few days now, since the Red Cross stopped distributing the food cards, people need immediate help again.”
This is the twentieth mass distribution campaign that the Crisis Bank has organized since the beginning of the crisis in March last year. The organization normally prefers to deliver the packages to people's homes.
But with so many new registrations coming in a week, the fastest way to feed the people was through a mass distribution campaign. “The situation has gotten a lot worse for many people since the start of this second lockdown. There are people who donated to the crisis bank last year, but now need a package themselves.”
Etiënne van de Horst, secretary general at the Ministry of SOAW, says that the food aid has now been taken over by the ministry. “A protocol has recently been signed. We are now working on a press release to clarify how the people who previously received help from the Red Cross can now register with us. The Red Cross is not allowed to share personal details of the people who received help through them.”
According to the secretary general, people who are registered with the Red Cross have already received a message that they must register online. “We have currently trained twenty people who are involved full-time with this registration process. Should the process take too long, we still have an option to deploy another twenty people. Those people who have registered are now being tested to see if they are not already receiving help with SOAW. This is the reason why the process takes a little longer.”
According to Van der Horst, the residents of Curaçao are taken over by SOAW one on one. The Netherlands currently still has the responsibility for food aid for the undocumented. But from the end of July, that aid will also go through the ministry.