To alleviate the impacts of COVID-19 policies, many initiatives have been developed by civil society organisations – NGOs, local governments, or citizens. A team of national researchers from the RESISTIRÉ project has collected and highlighted a set of particularly relevant initiatives in 27 European countries and in Iceland, Serbia, the United Kingdom and Turkey. These Better Stories cover eight specific domains: gender-based violence, the labour market, the economy, gender-pay and pension gaps, gender care gaps, decision-making and politics, environmental justice, human and fundamental rights.

This Better Story was collected by Lina Sandstrom

Örebro Stadsmission (city mission) was founded in 2015 but distributed left over food before then in limited scale under a different name. Matcentralen (Food Central) is a shop that sells donated food from local businesses to individuals who are unable to meet their basic food needs through other means.

Navigating high Demand

It was founded in cooperation with Immanuelskyrkan in 2019. When the pandemic hit, demand for the service increased dramatically and they moved to larger premises in June 2020. Due to inflation and high food prices, demand continues to be high.

In 2019, they donated 80 shopping baskets per week, in august 2022, this had gone up to 270. The food in Matcentralen could be near expiration date, or the packaging may be damaged, but it goes through a quality check and is sold in a setting similar to a standard supermarket where members can decide for themselves what they want to buy. People who find it difficult to make ends meet can become members and buy a gift card for 50 SEK (€5) which pays for five shopping baskets (one per week).

Photo de Aaron Doucett sur Unsplash

Find out more about the initiative

To alleviate the impacts of COVID-19 policies, many initiatives have been developed by civil society organisations – NGOs, local governments, or citizens. A team of national researchers from the RESISTIRÉ project has collected and highlighted a set of particularly relevant initiatives in 27 European countries and in Iceland, Serbia, the United Kingdom and Turkey. These Better Stories currently cover eight specific domains: gender-based violence, the labour market, the economy, gender-pay and pension gaps, gender care gaps, decision-making and politics, environmental justice, human and fundamental rights.

This Better Story was collected by Anne Charlotte Callerstig and Tuncer Fatma.

A need to show empathy

People’s everyday life and study situation had changed drastically because of the pandemic. There were a lot fewer opportunities for physical social contact. This raised an even greater need to show empathy and compassion for each other and placed a great emphasis on the importance of continuing to work with fundamental values in mind, especially in digital classrooms. The Raoul Wallenberg Academy (RWA) is able to provide the previously mentioned materials because it is a fundraising organisation committed to anti-racism, anti-discrimination, and anti-xenophobia.

A toolkit to spread compassion

The RWA decided to offer its expertise in a digital format and free of charge by developing a digital kit for teachers with school materials. These materials were meant for both direct use in digital classrooms and for supporting teachers and educators behind the scenes. They included: a list of 10 things teachers could do to spread compassion in times of crisis; a list of 100 ways/challenges to create a better world (which could be shared with students); lessons about human rights; a tool consisting of a film to be shared with students and a teacher’s guide to help prevent racism and discrimination; a free digital seminar in ‘self-leadership’ that kept students and teachers feeling motivated; a video ‘channel’ for teachers made by teachers, who share tips on civil courage, self-leadership and involvement of students in the classroom; and free digital workshops for teachers, as long as the pandemic kept going. All of these tools and materials were (and are still) available on the RWA’s website.

Image by Raoul Wallenberg Academy