Restos du Coeur

P.S: Mohon maaf kalau ditulis dalam bahasa Inggris, karena pada awalnya memang ditujukan untuk blog saya lainnya: Project Week 1.1 - Restos du Coeur | INDONESIAN IN FREIBURG. Tapi, saya lumayan yakin bahwa bahasa Inggris saya tidak terlalu rumit. Jadi, selamat membaca! :D

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Before I truly start my post, probably you already have questions such as why the title is in French and why I haven’t posted for a period of time. So, the answer is that I went to France for project week! Yey! I write this prior to my main project week story because I have a lot of ideas to write for my blog but I don’t really know which I should write first. So, I think this is easier to write and more important to share.

The line

Restos du Coeur is an organization that I worked voluntarily for in my project week. This organization is a French charity, which the main activity is to distribute food packages and hot meals to the needy. A restaurant to another may have different style of distributing food. At the place I worked for, the main aim is not to feed the needy, but to make sure that they have 6 meals every week. It might not seem really much, but for a voluntary project which serves more than 200 families every week, it is huge.

Our task was to accompany the representative of the family to walk around the restaurant and pick the food they wanted. There were several sections in the restaurant. First, there were milk (1 box per person) and juices (1 bottle per family). And then there were vegetables, food cans, fruits, cheese, and yogurt which were using point. The number of point each family differs from one to another depends on the number of person in the family. Different things have different point, such as big can of vegetable is 4 and the small one is 2. But, the point system didn’t work perfectly because we also had to consider the number of stock they had and the condition of the family. If we gave based on the point, the family who came later wouldn’t find any of these part left.

Then, there were also meats and frozen foods section which had servers so the servers had their own system. The last were breads, desserts, sauces, coffee and flowers which we could offer up to us but still had to consider the family condition and the number of the stock. And sometimes, there were also nice and useful stuff like flowers, herb pots, mops and diapers.

There were two main challenges I found in this voluntary work. The first was that we have to be mindful in allowing them to pick the food. We had to be generous to them as they might be really suffering, but we also had to put in mind about the other families. Sorry and no were pretty hard to say, but it was the challenge. And then, there were also a language barrier. Most of the families only spoke French, while I didn’t speak French at all. Some people also spoke Arabic, Russian, German, and sometimes English which was lucky to have. But after finishing the work, I realized that language barrier was not such a big obstacle to do something great and I was/am really grateful of this experience.

The products

That was the system I followed at that place. Not only different style in distributing food, I searched on Internet and I read that there were also different activities that they do such as gardening. I also read that in the winter this organization could save hundreds of homeless people every year because of their foods. And it is amazing!

Briefly, the idea was from a French comedian and actor, Coluche. He launched the idea, “”I have a little idea, a bit like this… If there are people who would be interested in sponsoring a free soup kitchen, we’d start first in Paris and then spread to France’s big cities,” on 26 September 1985. The first restaurant opened two months later and spread all over the country. The idea grew more and more and in fact one of Coluche’s plea was heard by the European Parliament in February 1986. This story teaches me that you can make something great from a simple idea; just give it a shot and work hard for it!

After all, I really like the idea of this organization and I wonder if the other people can make the similar thing in the other countries, especially developing countries like mine. I talked this to my mom and she said ­it would be really nice to have it, but we still had to learn more and more how this system could work in other countries, such as Indonesia. It is not easy to apply a system from a country to another country which has different circumstance, even though it is possible. But, I believe there will be more and more great movement such as this in this world :)