Abstract:
Food insecurity is increasingly recognised as a significant public health issue in high-income
countries (Tarasuk, 2005), an issue that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated. The
dominant approach to hunger and food insecurity in high-income nations has historically
leaned on the charitable distribution of food through community-led, not-for-profit, third sector
organisations and projects. For the most part, literature on food charity as a response to food
insecurity focuses on its negative impacts, such as depoliticisation and the stigma and shame
associated with receiving food charity. Yet, the extent to which food aid organisations have
acknowledged and responded to these critiques has been underexplored (Wakefield et al.,
2013). Taking together the concepts of food security, food charity and food resilience, this
research aims to address this gap by exploring what actually existing community-based food
provisioning looks like. This research utilises experiential qualitative methodology, using
semi-structured interviews and participant observation to collect data. The primary data is
supplemented by documentary sources and grey literature such as media reporting, official
reports, policy and other organisational documents, and thematic analysis was used to code and
interpret the data. Findings indicate that community-led food aid organisations can be largely
constrained within a charitable model of food provision because of the massive demand for
their services and the need to alleviate the immediate food insecurity of recipients. This is
compounded by many challenges organisations encounter in their day-to-day operations. These
challenges create a state of instability, whereby these organisations are constantly in flux or are
subject to ad hoc resources and relationships. Despite these challenges, organisations appear to
be employing diverse strategies in their actually existing food provisioning, contributing
towards local food system resilience.