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‘Selling out on the Revolution for a Plate of Beans’? Communal

Dining in Peru and what we can learn from it

Dr Bryce Evans

Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Travelling Fellowship 2014

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Contents

Keywords and Executive Summary 3

About Manna Community Kitchen 5

Food Poverty Today 7

The ‘Feeding Britain’ Report and How it can go Further 9

Communal Dining in Peru in Historical Perspective 11

Peru’s Community Kitchens Today 17

State Support 25

Other Actors 28

Applicability in the UK 35

Implementing these Findings 39

Acknowledgements 40

Further reading 41

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Keywords

sustainable living; food security; food poverty; development; malnutrition; Peru; female

empowerment; food history; health; poverty; food banks; community; cooking; eating.

Executive Summary

This report details the history and current operation of ‘community kitchens’ in Peru and

explores what aspects of this model can be applied in alleviating food poverty in the UK.

In Peru thousands of comedores populares (literally ‘popular dining rooms’ but, in common

English usage and from here on ‘community kitchens’) provide cheap, nutritious meals to the

people from the poorest sections of society. Different types of communal dining in Peru are

investigated in this report, which details popular grassroots efforts, state-run schemes and

NGO and faith-based initiatives.

This research was undertaken during a five week period in August and September 2014. This

involved visiting dozens of community kitchens in poor areas of the major Peruvian cities of

Lima, Arequipa, Puno and Cusco and interviewing the women who volunteer there, both past

and present. To provide clear examples of how communal dining functions in Peru, several

case studies are cited throughout the report. It must be noted, however, that this research

encompasses many more people and places than can be acknowledged here.

This report asks the following questions:

What can the UK learn from the Peruvian model of egalitarian eating? What does this suggest

about the role of the State vis-à-vis individuals and voluntary groups? And can the UK

develop its food bank network so that it resembles the community kitchen movement of

Peru?

These questions are addressed against the backdrop of recent Peruvian history and the current

model of food bank relief practised in the UK. The report comes to the following

conclusions:

In the UK, food relief schemes should incorporate the distribution of fresh fruit

and vegetables rather than just non-perishable foodstuffs.

This can be achieved through supermarkets managing the donation of fresh produce

more efficiently. This is key to cutting food waste and improving nutrition.

This process will require better support from local and national government, which

should support food banks in their purchase of non-perishable items.

In the UK, food relief schemes should develop cookery skills.

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Food banks, wherever possible, should incorporate a café or kitchen area, where

food which is received can be cooked and/or eaten.

At present, too many people are receiving non-perishable foodstuffs without the

ability or resources to transform these goods into a nutritious meal.

In the UK, food relief schemes need to foster a sense of community.

The food bank model (whereby vouchers from GPs, job centres etc. are redeemed

at a food bank) does nothing to combat the stigma of the ‘hand out’.

More importantly, it does not address mental problems borne of social dislocation,

depression and loneliness.

The simple act of eating together (in a café or dining area attached to a food bank)

would replicate the communal cohesion witnessed in Peru, which is lacking in the

UK context.

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About Manna

Manna Community Kitchen was established in Liverpool in 2012 by Marian Carey and Bryce

Evans. Manna Community Kitchen’s ethos can be summed up succinctly: we do not believe

in cooking and eating for one.

Figure 1 Eating a bowl of ‘Scouse’

Manna Community Kitchen is not a soup kitchen and it’s not a food bank. While both these

models help to combat food poverty in the UK they are imperfect. The stigma of the ‘hand

out’ is attached to both. Moreover, when it comes to food banks in particular, the food rarely,

if ever, consists of fresh fruit and vegetables: the essential components of healthy diet and

nutritional wellbeing.

A further problem with current food poverty initiatives in the UK is that they do not tackle

the ‘hidden’ yet highly significant issue of mental illness and social isolation. Food banks

operate on the basis of submitting a ticket (received from a GP or job centre) and receiving a

food package in return. A key component of mental wellbeing is social interaction, which is

frequently all but absent.

The stigma surrounding food bank use means that many recipients testify to feeling

‘ashamed’, forcing them to leave the centre promptly on receiving their food. This allows for

little opportunity for following up on the welfare of the individuals availing of the service.

This only perpetuates negativity and makes finding a long term solution difficult. There are

very rarely cafés, kitchens or social areas attached to food banks; such simple provision

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would create a more relaxed and informal environment which would assist in putting

recipients at ease.

Figure 2 Manna Community Kitchen logo

The idea of a community kitchen, by contrast to the food bank, centres on the concept of

communal eating.

Community does not have to be static; it can be mobile, as in the case of Manna Community

Kitchen. Manna Community Kitchen’s volunteers travel to old people’s homes; church

groups; youth theatres; community centres – anywhere where people gather collectively – to

dish out hearty and nutritious food at very low prices. A bowl of freshly prepared vegetable

soup and a crusty roll costs £1 so is widely affordable.

Most importantly, however, this model allows people to come together to dine collectively.

Sitting down to eat and chat is a simple but catalytic solution, and its implications for social

cohesion, friendliness, happiness and wellbeing are far-reaching indeed.

Working in partnership with local businesses, charities, church groups and community

centres, Manna Community Kitchen creates simple yet lasting and sustainable solutions to

poverty, hunger and social injustice.

With the publication of the parliamentary report Feeding Britain in December 2014

(preceded by an impassioned speech by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby) the issue of

UK food poverty is more pressing than ever. Manna Community Kitchen believes that the

UK food bank system needs a radical overhaul, with lessons to be learnt from the report that

follows below.

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Food Poverty Today

We are currently facing an unnecessary global starvation epidemic. We live in a time of

overabundant food production but, despite this, almost a billion people go hungry every day.

These figures are no longer only applicable to the developing world.

In the UK today, 1 in 5 children now live below the poverty line. Food poverty is defined as

‘an inability to acquire or consume an adequate or sufficient quantity of food’ and ‘an

uncertainty that one will be able to do so’. This is where Manna Community Kitchen comes

in.

Our vision is simple. We round up, recycle, reallocate and redistribute surplus food; therefore

making it readily available to those who need it most. We receive donations of fresh food

(mostly vegetables) from supermarkets, greengrocers and restaurants and put it to good use in

simple, hearty stews, soups and broths.

Manna Community Kitchen understands food and believes in its ability to bring people

together and to get people expressing themselves. Food is a force that needs to be utilised

more effectively, ethically, sustainably and creatively, particularly where food waste is

concerned. Each year in the UK alone, over 18 million tonnes of food ends up in landfills;

Manna Community Kitchen strives to change this.

Figure 3 At one of Manna’s community kitchen events, south Liverpool

The world produces more than enough food to feed its seven billion inhabitants and in the last

thirty years food production has actually outstripped population growth. But at the same time,

as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) points out, we need to make

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our relationship with food more sustainable because the global population is set to increase to

nine billion by 2050.

Our solutions to global hunger start locally. They are comprehensive, context specific, needs

based and implemented through direct community participation. Manna Community Kitchen

utilises all resources available and relies on the involvement of community volunteers and

local, skilled professionals.

There are thousands of food banks across the UK, many run as sole operations by local

volunteers, and often by faith-based groups. Of these, 420 are affiliated to a nationwide

network of food banks coordinated by the Trussell Trust, an NGO based in Salisbury. The

Trussell trust was founded in 1997 to combat food poverty in Bulgaria but later expanded its

operations at home. According to the Trust, its affiliated food banks fed 913,138 people

nationwide in 2013-14. Of those helped, 330,205 were children.

Manna’s project is a step above the traditional food bank model in that we do not provide

hand-outs but instead focus on skills training, technical workshops, mentoring programmes

and outreach work. For instance, we encourage people – young and old – to chop up

vegetables and cook with us and to help us grow food, thus transferring broader skills.As well

as eliminating waste, our project provides a community hub which, in a challenging and often

alienating economic climate, brings people together.

In order to tackle the underlying causes of hunger, we address a range of social, political,

organisational and structural concerns. To ensure long term success, Manna Community

Kitchen guarantees that all programmes are sustainable without the aid of external and third

parties. But by partnering with local and national systems, we endeavour to turn short term

initiatives into long-term, sustainable solutions.

So what would success, for Manna Community Kitchen, look like? Long term success would

be the extension of the community kitchen model across the UK as a complement to, and an

eventual replacement for, food banks. This depends on the building of strategic partnerships

to manage and maintain our programmes.

It also depends on taking best practice from overseas and applying at home both locally and

nationally. That is why, thanks to the support of the Winston Churchill Trust, Manna

Community Kitchen travelled to Peru in September 2014.

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The ‘Feeding Britain’ report and how it can go further

In December 2014, the report of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Hunger in the

United Kingdom was published. As the ‘Feeding Britain’ report asserted, ‘advanced Western

economies’ with mature welfare states are increasingly reliant on food banks.

It follows that the UK, like the other ‘advanced Western economies’, can no longer afford to

smugly look askance at anti-food poverty initiatives in the developing world. Instead, as this

report urges, we actually have much to learn from them.

Concerning the specific recommendations of ‘Feeding Britain’, this study has much to offer

and can be used to help shape the debate. The key recommendations of the parliamentary

report, and how they relate to the report at hand, are outlined here. The key recommendations

are discussed by the numbers under which they appear in the ‘Feeding Britain’ report.

1.A new network called ‘Feeding Britain’

As the parliamentary report’s first recommendation states, an umbrella UK network

comprising food banks and other food assistance providers is needed.

But, as in Peru, such a ‘horizontal’ network should be State-supported while at the same time

retaining its independence. This study (p.20 onwards) details how such networks - which are

simultaneously hierarchal and ‘grassroots’ - work in Peru.

10. The provision of fresh food

Fresh food is mentioned briefly in the ‘Feeding Britain’ report.

By contrast, this study calls for this to become a central plank of food bank provision in the

UK. This will require greater flexibility from individual supermarkets.

But we need to go beyond providing fresh produce. Food banks should provide a space (café

or merely kitchen) where fresh and non-perishable food can be prepared and/or consumed as

a meal, as happens in Peru.

23. Cookery skills

The parliamentary report calls for budgeting and parenting skills to be included in the

National Curriculum.

This study argues that such skills can be more usefully be gained at the point of delivery: i.e.

at the food bank. We need communal cooking and dining spaces as an extra in food banks.

These could even be modestly revenue-generating (yet price capped and controlled).

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Going further

The parliamentary report could go a lot further in overhauling the food bank system as it

currently operates. The following page lists what wasn’t mentioned, but should and could

have been:

Mental Health

In October 2014 the deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, committed to putting treatment for

mental health conditions on a level with physical health. He asserted that common mental

illnesses such as depression and anxiety should be taken more seriously.

In Manna’s work and in Peru, such conditions are practically combated through the simple

act of communal food preparation and dining. Incorporating this into food banks (so that food

banks become ‘community kitchens’) would contribute to the combating of dislocation,

depression and loneliness in our society.

State Assistance

In Peru, the government supplies (see p.30 onwards) the basic non-perishables needed for the

preparation of meals in ‘community kitchens’: cooking oil and rice. The UK government

should do the same.

The supermarkets’ responsibility would thereby shift to providing solely fresh produce: fruit

and vegetables. This would encourage supermarkets to properly address the major ingredient

in food waste: fresh food instead of providing nutritionally limited non-perishables such as

tinned food.

Sustainability

The ‘Feeding Britain’ report falls short in envisioning how the UK can move beyond the

‘emergency’ or ‘sticking plaster’ approach to food poverty via food banks.

This study details how emergency food relief was administered by communities in time of

civil strife in Peru but also - crucially - how it has evolved into a communal, state-supported

model which is more sustainable and long-term in its operation and aspirations.

The Independence of the Voluntary Sector

As this report details, the community kitchen network in Peru remains successful because it

possesses a sense of independence. This does not mean that state support is absent. Rather, a

balance has been struck after years of struggle, debate and compromise.

If the UK’s ‘Feeding Britain’ network is to function successfully, voluntary groups

contributing to it must retain their organic qualities. At the same time, as in Peru, the state

must support ‘Feeding Britain’ rather than letting it operate alone.

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Communal Dining in Peru in historical perspective

Why Peru?

Peru contains the largest number of ‘community kitchens’ in the world. For the reason why

this Latin American country contains thousands upon thousands of ‘community kitchens’, we

have to look at the country’s history.

Before the Spanish invasion, the territory was dominated by the indigenous Incan empire.

Thanks to the stockpiling of crops and distribution of food, there was no famine in the Incan

world. That pre-Columbian food production and distribution was communal remains a source

of great cultural pride to many in Peru today.

From the sixteenth century onwards, though, the territory was part of an extractive colonial

economy based around the exploitation of mineral resources. With the defeat of the Spanish

empire in the nineteenth century, modern Peru came into existence. But with coastal Lima

becoming the capital of the independent state, the economic and cultural supremacy of the

pale-skinned creole elite over the indigenous population (located in the highlands) persisted.

Figure 4 Map of Peru

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Into the Twentieth century

Ethnically, Peru (along with Bolivia) has the highest proportion of indigenous inhabitants in

Latin America. Communal dining in Peru is rooted in indigenous Andean values of

mutuality. Therefore, a major underlying factor behind the growth of communal dining in

Peruvian cities is the rural to urban migration of indigenous people.

The pace of urbanisation in the country’s recent history is startling. Lima’s metropolitan area

was home to 661,000 people in 1940. Today, this figure is a whopping 9 million.

The 1950s witnessed the beginnings of this mass urban migration as post-war shifts in the

global agricultural market delivered mass unemployment in the agricultural economy of Peru.

To cope with the increase in the urban population, agencies such as the United Nations and

the Catholic Church established some feeding programmes in urban areas.

But as the 1950s became the 1960s, the extent of rural to urban migration outstripped these

efforts. Andean migrants soon came to settle on the unoccupied desert lands on Lima’s

periphery in huge numbers, their squats becoming sprawling shanty towns lacking legal

status and infrastructure. These shanty towns are known as pueblos jovenes (young towns) in

Peru. This pattern was repeated in every Peruvian city. The extent of this population growth

soon came to exert major strain on the infrastructure of the still-underdeveloped nation.

Partly as a result of these social and economic tensions, in the late 1960s and early 1970s

Peru found itself under a left wing military dictatorship. This regime favoured Peru’s poor, its

indigenous population and - especially - rural peasants. The colonial big house, or hacienda,

was soon a thing of the past and recent migrants to Lima - squatting illegally in shanty towns

around the city - were given legal title to those lands.

Gains won and lost

In 1975 a counter-coup reversed the gains of the poor Andean migrants of the pueblos

jovenes. At the same time, a disaffected middle class university professor, Abimael Guzman,

was formulating a more extreme version of liberation for the country’s poor. Inspired by Mao

Zedong, Guzman launched the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) insurgency from Peru’s

rural interior. Peru soon found itself in the midst of a Maoist insurgency.

For the next two decades Peru was scarred by a brutal war between state forces and Shining

Path guerrillas.

The net result of this bloody conflict was a renewed surge in migration to Lima as the rural

poor fled fighting and terror in the countryside. The vast majority of these migrants were

indigenous people, on whom both state and guerrilla violence bore down disproportionately.

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Figure 5 An image which typifies the massive migration to urban centres

Viewed romantically, this enormous in-migration (above) constituted an Andean re-conquest

of the colonial capital. Viewed realistically, it created huge social problems.

Meanwhile, the Peruvian economy underwent near-disastrous shifts. Turning his back on the

International Monetary Fund (IMF), the left-leaning President Alan García (1985-1990)

presided over a protectionist economy in which prices rose steeply. Soon, Peru was

experiencing the worst hyper-inflation in the world. Queues for staples such as bread and

milk became the norm and the state introduced food rationing to cope with the shortages.

With the price of food unaffordable to many, community kitchens - comedores populares -

sprung up in their thousands. The image below is an early example of one of these ventures.

They pooled resources together to offer cheap, nutritious food. Often, these women were

from the same highland villages or mountain communities. Finding themselves living in

sprawling urban slums with scant services and priced out of the market, they set about

ensuring that no one in their impoverished communities starved to death.

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Figure 6 An early 'community kitchen', 1980s

Selling out the Revolution for a plate of beans

The Shining Path, essentially a rural movement, soon extended their violence to eliminating

urban ‘delinquents’ (usually drug dealers and petty criminals) from pueblos jovenes in an

effort to win hearts and minds. Abimael Guzman, the dictatorial leader of Shining Path, was

critical of any projects which alleviated poverty, viewing them as mere ‘shock absorbers’ of a

dehumanising capitalist system.

Phenomena like comedores populares soon found themselves the targets of his ideological

condemnation. The poor indigenous women who led these simple ventures had, according to

Guzman, ‘sold out on the revolution for a plate of beans’.

In actual fact, these popular social projects were viewed as threatening precisely because they

were independent of ideology.

What’s more, they were effectively functioning as a welfare state. As the 1980s became the

1990s, the comedores were feeding approximately twenty per cent of all families in Lima

alone.

The comedores populares continued their significance after García lost the 1990 election to

Alberto Fujimori (below), an outside candidate who soon established himself as an

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authoritarian neo-liberal. During the 1990s Peru underwent a period of hard-hitting economic

austerity under the successive presidencies of Fujimori (1990-2000).

Figure 7 Fujimori

Community kitchens in the firing line

Fujimori’s austerity programme was dubbed ‘Fujishock’. It catapulted the number of

Peruvians living in critical poverty from six to eleven million overnight. Reliance on

community kitchens now reached new levels.

The women who ran these simple food shacks largely avoided any political rhetoric. Most

wanted change, but first and foremost they desired change for the good of their communities.

Their vision of communal cohesion, development and food security did not necessarily

coincide with the political goals of the state or its guerrilla enemies.

Put simply, the women who ran the community kitchens wanted to feed people cheaply and

nutritiously and they wanted the state to help out if possible. Since this did not chime with the

Shining Path’s bleak and dogmatic version of communism, comedores populares became

subject to a campaign of infiltration and intimidation.

The poor women of the comedores soon found themselves the firing line. In 1992, the tragic

María Elena Moyano, a prominent Liman community activist, was shot dead by the Shining

Path at a community barbecue. Explosives were then strapped to her corpse, which was

blown up. Tens of thousands flocked to her funeral (below).

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Figure 8 Moyano's funeral

Winning Recognition

In 1992, to widespread public relief, the government triumphed over the Maoists.

While cutting spending drastically, Fujimori simultaneously craved the patronage of popular

social schemes. So, in 1992, after many years of lobbying for state support, the female

leaders of the comedores won legal recognition a state guarantee to provision food for the

poor via the kitchens.

Law number 25307 was passed, enshrining the state’s promise to provide comedores with

basic provisions such as rice and cooking oil through the National Food Assistance Scheme.

This was seen by many within the community kitchen movement as a triumph. After years of

volunteering and scraping together money to feed their communities, the state was finally

pledging its financial support. For some, the battle was now won. According to many others,

however, winning state endorsement compromised the independence of the comedores.

Either way, the overriding point is that Peruvian communal dining emerged and survived as a

third way between two political ideologies: on the one hand, the aggressive neoliberalism of

Fujimori and, on the other, the brutal Maoism of the guerrillas.

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Community Kitchens Today

Defining Comedores Today

Today comedores are part-provisioned by the state. But this has left them open to political

manipulation. The bitter-sweet process of recognition and manipulation was recounted by

middle-aged female veterans of the movement (some of whom are pictured below).

Figure 9 Fr. Ed O'Connell with veterans of the 'community kitchen' movement

These ventures were, for the most part, run by women at the grassroots. Providing free or

very cheap food to needy populations, comedores populares came to represent a powerful

sense of organic social justice.

Fujimori, it seems, realised this. Instead of bullying and terrorising - like the guerrillas - he

granted the demands of the Central Federation of Women running Community Kitchens -

FEMOCCPAALC - and granted them legal status and wide-ranging consultative powers.

The remainder of Fujimori’s term was spent attempting to re-orient the Peruvian market,

hoping that Peruvians would adopt a spirit of rugged individualism rather than communalism.

Since the comedores clearly did not belong to the free market model, Fujimori was at pains to

encourage these communal ventures to become small-scale restaurants, thus removing the

state’s long-term responsibility to provision them. Some comedores took this path, however

the majority have remained faithful to their original model.

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But with the defeat of the Shining Path in the early 1990s and the political fall of Fujimori in

2000, the political ‘ownership’ and identity of comedores populares is uncertain. Before they

may have resembled a third way between the extremes of state austerity and terrorist

insurgency. But now, with Peru’s return to peace, is their separate space diminishing? This

report seeks to answer this question as well as many others.

In recent years Peru has embraced NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) and

is undergoing a process of modernisation, globalisation and re-branding. Central to this re-

branding has been a non-violent revolution: the so-called Peruvian ‘gastronomic revolution’.

The Peruvian ‘gastronomic revolution’ is all about lucrative food exports to western markets

and elite dining habits. With the expansion of the middle class, Lima now boasts a number of

exclusive restaurants, including one ranked eighteenth in the world. Lima’s new elite, who

wine and dine ostentatiously in the capital’s new restaurants, wouldn’t be seen dead in a

humble comedor where the menu choices are restricted to plain old beans and rice.

Ironically, though, it was the very migration from the mountains and consequent dependence

on the rickety rackety community kitchens which kick-started the country’s ‘food boom’.

Women from far-flung villages brought local recipes with them. They cooked and served to

nourish but also to preserve diverse, centuries-old gastronomic traditions. Unsurprisingly,

however, you don’t find this mentioned in any of Peru’s Michelin-starred eateries.

Figure 10 Fresh fruit and vegetables are an integral part of the community kitchen movement

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Visiting Kitchens Today

On Manna Community Kitchen’s research trip to Peru we visited community kitchens up and

down the country: in Lima, Arequipa, Puno and Cusco. But it is in Lima, the nation’s vast

capital, that most are to be found.

In smoggy, grimy, grey Lima the enormous, infamously poor district of Carabayllo is home

to a quarter of a million people. A sprawling northern suburb, it’s the largest of Lima’s forty-

three districts and one of the poorest. We’re warned by several people not to go there at all.

It is clear that Carabayllo is poor but because it’s a more established community, the residents

have slowly come to experience better living conditions after years of collective lobbying for

the state to supply water and electricity. It also means that, as a district, it has the highest

number of comedores in the capital and also the highest level of organisation. This is why the

administrative structure of comedores in the Carabayllo provides an excellent case study in

how community kitchens operate in Peru today.

The tiny, tinny motor-taxi is king in the Carabayllo, conveying people up vertiginously steep

hills and through narrow alleyways. We visit several comedores in Carabayllo, all run by

elderly and middle-aged women. Hilda Valdivia, a senior worker in the NGO Socios en Salud

(Partners in Health) takes us to several kitchens where government-supplied vegetable oil and

rice is stacked high and the women stir massive metallic pots of soup and rice.

The government supplies of oil and rice have been supplied to community kitchens ever since

provisions were pledged under President Fujimori’s National Food Assistance Scheme

(PRONAA) in 1992. This scheme has since been renamed and today these supplies are part

of the national feeding scheme named Qali Warma.

Research shows that state-supported initiatives such as Qali Warma and the Vaso de Leche

(glass of milk) scheme have been instrumental in preventing stunted growth in young

children suffering malnutrition.

Organisation

Later, Hilda leaves us in the hands of Vilma Huancan, the President of all the comedores in

Carabayllo, around eighty in total. Vilma, La Presidentia, is 53 years old and a calm, self-

assured woman (pictured below) who passes the introductory letter from the Churchill Trust

to local volunteers. She introduces us to yet more comedores in the area and it’s on Vilma’s

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tour that we get a better idea of the dizzyingly well organised structure of this movement.

Figure 11 Vilma, La Presidentia flanked by volunteers reading the introductory letter from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust

Not only have middle-aged women like her won the historical struggle for the state to provide

the kitchens with food, they also manage popular kitchens on a day-to-day basis. Comedores

are usually small tumbledown shacks with corrugated iron roofs (see below).

There are typically around ten women per comedor who are volunteers and who draw up a

weekly rota of cooking between them. Typically, two will club together on a certain weekday

to cook and dish out food, with a different pair taking over the next day, and so on.

Figure 12 A typical community kitchen

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Of these small band of volunteers, each individual comedor also has a President. Vilma, as

district President, sits above the eighty individual presidents in her area. As district

President, Vilma is part of a national organisational structure feeding into regions and

culminating in the National President of Peru’s comedores populares: Relinda Sosa. These

are all strong, formidable women and so it’s not surprising to hear from Vilma that Relinda’s

politically incorrect nickname is ‘Masculinda’. Relinda heads up the national federation of

comedores, a body which goes by the rather overblown abbreviation FEMOCCPAALC.

Vilma is a warm woman, evidently popular and supportive and protective of all the

comedores in her area. But she’s also capable of reprimand. Indeed, this is part of her role.

We see this when we visit the Cena de Jesus kitchen (see below). It’s the first (and indeed

only) comedor we’ve seen which is unclean. This is s because the President of this comedor

is ill, suffering with chest problems that are aggravated by cooking in the badly ventilated

shed that serves as the kitchen.

Before we leave the Carabayllo, Vilma presents us with photocopies of piles of paperwork.

It’s further evidence that in established poor and working class areas like the Carabayllo, the

popular community kitchen ethic is alive, well and highly organised.

Figure 13 The Cena de Jesus kitchen

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Pricing in Comedores

Although most members of Peru’s newly emergent and highly aspirational middle class

would not be seen dead in a community kitchen, anyone is welcome to eat in a comedor. A

meal typically costs between 2 and 3 soles (£0.50 - £0.75). But how much you actually pay

for your plate of food in a comedor depends on your social and economic situation. In most

comedores, there are posters outlining the three price bands:

1) Gratuito (free). Poor families, especially those experiencing sickness. State covers cost.

2) Semicontributivo (semi-contributory). Self-employed workers. State covers half the cost.

3) Contributivo (contributory). Professionals and businesspeople. They, or their business,

pays.

Figure 14 Price structure in community kitchens: free, semi-contributory, and contributory

Organisational Structure

Community kitchens are humble places. There is no menu, just the dish of the day (always

accompanied by beans and rice) simmering away in huge pots. But this outward appearance

belies a highly organised structure, which is detailed in the pyramid below and starts off with

the individual kitchen.

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Figure 15 The organisational structure of the country's community kitchen movement

Comedor: Community Kitchen

The individual kitchen. Run on a rota basis by between six and fourteen local women.

Central Zonal: Zonal Organisation

Within urban districts, local comedores in a certain zone (network of streets) regularly meet.

Central Distrital: District Organisation

All the comedores in one district. In Carabayllo this comprises around 80 comedores.

FEMOCCPAALC: Central Federation of Women running Community Kitchens

The central organisational body.

CONAMOVIDI: National Confederation of Women Organised for Life and

Development

Female-led umbrella organisation which seeks to improve policies covering food security,

health and education at the local, regional and national level.

Achievements

As the central organising body of Peru’s community kitchens, FEMOCCPAALC has been

instrumental in securing change at a national level in Peru through state recognition.

FEMOCCPAALC might not trip off the tongue, but it does boast several critical

achievements.

International Recognition: Peru’s community kitchens have gained international notice for

their work in pursuing food security from the bottom-up. The pinnacle of such recognition

came when FEMOCCPAALC was awarded a diploma and bronze medal by the UN FAO.

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National Food Policy: FEMOCCPAALC has periodically organised mobilisations in

defence of Law 25307 (by which the state guaranteed the provision of basic food supplies to

comedores). In doing so, it has had a role in the coordination of the state’s Program Nacional

de Apoyo Alimentario (National Food Support Program) and acts as a watchdog over it.

Health: The women of the Cena de Jesus kitchen were unable to maintain it, they claimed,

due to breathing problems. This came as a surprise to us since a decade ago

FEMOCCPAALC helped run a successful ‘coal briquettes’ campaign, which promoted gas

cooking as a healthier alternative to charcoal briquette cooking.

Figure 16 The community kitchen standard

Autonomy: With the winning of state support in 1992, the autonomy of community kitchens

was eroded somewhat, with the movement faced with the political manipulation of social

programmes by central government. Since then, however, FEMOCCPAALC has headed

citizen oversight of the state’s programme of food assistance.

Building Capacity: In taking on a role as a national actor, FEMOCCPAALC has built

strategic relations with social organisations and institutions which also work towards the

wellbeing of women.

Local Impacts: FEMOCCPAALC has given a federated identity and logo to all registered

comedores, part of its goal to provide a sense of institutional ownership at local level.

25

State support

While FEMOCCPAALC has achieved some real gains off its own bat, today the nation’s

comedores receive substantial state support. Such support has been critical to their

sustainability.

Considerable power is wielded by local government in Peru and in recent years, local

government has taken on the running of various comedores. After community kitchens won

state recognition and support in 1992, food assistance to the poor was guaranteed by the

Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion.

In recent years, this activity has been transferred to local governments (municipalities).

Municipalities are currently responsible for providing monthly groceries to soup kitchens and

perform monitoring through the Health and Social Development department of each

municipality. Thus state food assistance (Qali Warma) is now managed by municipalities.

Vaso de Leche (glass of milk) is another state program that offers a glass of milk (in the form

of Avena – a powdered sweet oatmeal beverage) to pregnant women and children under six

years of age. This is done on a referral basis through community promoters or voluntarily if

recipients feel that they need it. ‘Glass of milk’ is another complement to the state’s feeding

programme.

The state has also undertaken high profile campaigns to improve health and food security by

promoting allotments and seeking to alleviate lung problems caused by the use of charcoal

briquettes in traditional oven cooking by encouraging gas cooking.

As well as supporting community kitchens, Peruvian local government also addresses food

security via a number of ‘municipal kitchens’, several of which we visited.

The comedor municipale in the lower middle class district of Barranco is a good example of

communal feeding schemes run by local government in Peru’s capital. Every morning, old

people queue for their free ‘Leche de Soya’ (soya milk). Wearing white overalls and gloves,

Berna Rios Escobedo, the sole worker at the kitchen, stirs up big steamy vats of hot soya

milk. The older residents bring their own containers, queuing up and waiting for Berna to fill

their bottles and jugs, which they then take away with them.

26

Figure 17 The ‘Leche de Soya’ programme in Barranco, Lima

The ‘Leche de Soya’ programme in Barranco sustains the young, too. As the old people of

Barranco queue for their hot milk, municipal workers bustle past them and straight over to

Berna, carrying huge containers. These are for ‘los Niños’ – the local children. Berna fills up

these huge vats and the council workers struggle out with them, loading them into cars and

trucks. The milk is then transported to the poorest areas of the district.

Berna also serves up lunch every day. This consists of soup and a hot meal and costs 3 soles

(about 60 pence, which is a bit dearer than lunch in your average comedor). This price is

nonetheless significantly cheaper than the cheapest so-called ‘Menu’ restaurants in Lima.

‘Menu’ restaurants are small, private ventures. They offer which offer a similar amount of

food for double the price (usually 6 soles - around £1.20).

In contrast to the hot milk served up for breakfast, lunch at the ‘Leche de Soya’ programme is

a communal dining affair. People come and sit on the wooden benches of the dining room,

eating and chatting together. Old people predominate, but there are poor people of all ages

present.

27

Negotiating state support: Problems

The municipal kitchen scheme evidently combats social dislocation, especially in the old and

infirm. This is a key aim of Manna Community Kitchen in the English North West. However,

the local authorities value it more for its direct health benefits. Even in a relatively middling

district like Barranco a good deal of housing stock is squalid and there are serious health

problems in the local population.

A lot of the hot food Berna provides helps people with serious health issues: diabetes;

alcoholism; drug addiction; AIDS; tuberculosis; child malnutrition; as well as expectant

mothers and menopausal women. Above the kitchen there is a health centre which places

strong emphasis on sexual health. Community is just one part of a bigger picture in which the

poor state of public health looms large.

With state support of community kitchens from 1992, many women have complained of the

removal of their autonomy and the transformation of a grassroots movement into a much

more established form of organisation. Sure, a large part of the financial burden of providing

the food was removed when President Fujimori took comedores populares under his

clientelist wing, but a spirit of independence was lost and corruption crept in. The recent

decentralisation of food security programmes to local government has not removed the stain

of corruption..

The contracts to supply the ingredients for the Vaso de Leche scheme, for example, are

subject to a highly competitive tendering process. The ‘glass of milk’ is not simply a glass of

milk. The ‘milk’ is fortified with vitamins and minerals essential for promoting growth repair

and good health. This ensures that there is cut-throat competition between food and

pharmaceutical corporations who stand to gain many millions from winning state contracts.

Corruption has, therefore, marked the scheme from its inception. Peru’s La Republica

newspaper recently exposed the hidden violence surrounding the ‘glass of milk’ scheme. For

instance, local councillors in Amarilis, a district of the mountainous province of Huánuco,

central Peru, have been shot dead for opposing the signing of a contract between the

municipality and NISA, a company which supplied products for the ‘glass of milk’ scheme

and Deputy Mayor Silvia Trujillo Rubin lost an eye when she was shot in the head at point-

blank range in 2005.

In the last three years, President Ollanta Humala (2011-present) has attempted to set himself

apart from his predecessors by establishing a Ministry of Social Protection in order to root

out some of the corruption involved in the administration of social projects.

However, change comes dropping slow. There have been three ministerial resignations since

the department’s creation. Notably, these have been linked to negligence in the process of

providing food for the poor. There have been successive scandals surrounding the poor

quality of milk supplied to children through the ‘glass of milk’ scheme and, notably,

instances of child deaths and illness caused by unscrupulous businessmen supplying state

schemes with contaminated milk.

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Other actors

To recap, Peru’s community kitchens were an organic venture which enjoyed their greatest

strength as a social movement in the late ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s before winning a degree of

state support.

But like in Britain, where the Trussell Trust coordinates most but not all food banks, in Peru

other groups – most notably faith groups – play a large role in alleviating food poverty.

With migration and income inequality continuing to rise in Peru, one consequence has been

the gap in social provision: one which non-state and non-grassroots actors such as NGOs and

churches seek to fill.

The Catholic Church

In contrast to the ‘popular’ communal dining ventures Manna visited, in the mountain city of

Arequipa we visited several run by the Catholic Church. Brother Victor Ramos is our guide.

29

Figure 18 On a Mission from God: Brother Victor Ramos beside the Last Supper

Brother Victor takes us to the Arequipan shanty towns of Ville Cerrillos and Paucarpata. We

see a primary school that has been set up by donations from the Church and other charitable

bodies. The Nada Marquez school provides more than just education. For just one sole

(£0.25) a week, families can buy their child breakfast and lunch at the school.

The success of the scheme has been astounding. Nutritionists put child malnutrition in the

school at 70% when the school meals started a decade ago. Today it’s 9%. And it’s thanks to

the introduction of simple foods such as mandarin oranges, cereal, soya and rice into a staple

diet dominated by the potato.

Importantly, the school also provides lessons in basic hygiene and healthy eating for kids and

parents alike. In a teeming slum in which there is only one water pump, which is only

operative for one hour per day, teaching the basics about hygienic food preparation is

essential.

Later we visit the Santa Rosa community kitchen. Like all community kitchens in Peru, this

one has its patron saint. But unlike the majority, this one is run by the Catholic Church

exclusively for old people. It’s the cheapest comedor we’ve visited yet. Just half a sole

(£0.12) gets you a good, nutritious plate of food. Grandmothers and a handful of grandfathers

congregate there every day to chat and eat (see below). It’s great to see loneliness in old

people being combated through such a simple formula: come, eat, chat. There’s also

education here: in embroidery, knitting and catechism.

Figure 19 Community kitchen for older residents

30

The activist role of the Catholic Church is pronounced in Latin America. In the 1960s and

’70s the ‘Liberation theology’ movement gained ground on the continent. In 1971 the

Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez published one of the movement’s key texts, A Theology of

Liberation. Gutiérrez laid the blame for poverty at the feet of politicans, capitalists and the

unjust social structures they sustained. Priests of this school strove to build a bottom-up

movement in practice rather than through doctrine.

Critics accused Liberation theology and its proponents of practising Christian Marxism. This

is a view shared by Brother Victor, who argues that the movement essentially places

materialism above spirituality. But ventures such as Brother Victor’s community kitchen and

his school feeding scheme are clearly influenced by the activist vision of Liberation Theology

in Latin America (even if he doesn’t like to admit it).

Figure 20 A senior citizen at the Santa Rosa community kitchen

Moreover, under Pope Francis, the Vatican has pursued rapprochement with the likes of

Gutiérrez and his radical version of Catholicism. Take Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the

Gospel), Pope Francis’ 2013 apostolic exhortation, which tackles socio-economic inequality

31

robustly, contending that ‘trickle down’ theories of wealth creation exhibit a ‘crude and naïve

trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power’.

Figure 21 Lunch time at the Santa Rosa kitchen

All this acts as a clear reminder that in Peru churches - predominately the Catholic - play a

big role in ensuring food security. The state may provision comedores populares. But in

terms of social security there’s still a sizeable vacuum. Around 30% of people in Peru don’t

have ID cards. Without an ID card in Peru, you are unable to qualify for any state benefits.

By contrast, even if you don’t have an ID card, you can still get fed in a community kitchen.

However, where comedores populares and comedores municipales don’t exist – particularly

in the newest slum settlements – there is a clear gap in social provision. Often, faith

initiatives fill this gap.

The Protestant Revolution

One of Manna’s most moving visits was to the shanty town of PamplonaAlta, part of the

nuevo pueblo (new town) district of San Juan de Miraflores in Lima. It’s a squatters’ village:

the residents don’t own the land, they’re just recent Andean migrants who’ve pitched up and

built from scratch. The miserable shacks in which people live are cobbled together from

chunks of wood or old advertising hoardings. They are, quite literally, falling to bits (below).

32

Figure 22 The squalour of the slums

Here, there is no regular water supply; just one big delivery a week. Since it was a Sunday

when we visited, the water supply for the week had dried up several days previously. This

presents a serious public health issue. It also complicates things for people like Dan Kasnich,

the American head of an NGO named Construyendo Sueños (‘Building Dreams’) who are

attempting to develop sustainable projects like a community allotment. Lima receives very

little rainfall and without running water it’s hard to grow crops.

Figure 23 Children who benefit from the 'Building Dreams' mission

33

Most of the women in this slum work as maids in the big houses over the hill. To get to work

they have walk up a steep hill and then climb through a hole in a wall. The hole is an illegal

one and the wall - dubbed the ‘wall of shame’ - has been thrown up in the last few years by

Lima’s wealthy suburbanites, keen not only to keep the slum dwellers out but also to prevent

their views from being spoiled by vistas of dirty slums as they sip on their morning coffee.

Looking around Pamplona Alta one sees swarms of children unaccompanied by their parents.

Their mothers are gone sometimes six or seven days a week, cleaning and tidying in the

palaces of Lima’s new elite, where they stay overnight, remaining at the whim of their

bosses. The menfolk mainly work in construction. Often, they are the ones labouring to

construct these big houses. When they’re finished their impossibly long shifts, mothers and

fathers crawl back through the hole in the wall of shame to all-too-briefly see their kids. Then

they’re gone again.

Construyendo Sueños is significant because it is an evangelical Christian charity. Before

feeding the slum children, who hungrily gobble up the fruit juice and hot dogs they are plied

with (image above) Dan and his fellow volunteers lead prayers. Like Brother Victor’s

community kitchen, they also combine the provision of food with bible study.

Compared to the popular, grassroots, no-questions-asked ethos of the community kitchen

movement, it is easy to look at faith efforts and shout ‘proselytism!’ But this would be to

ignore the genuine gap in social provision – both popular and state-administered – in the

country’s newest and most wretched slums.

For all their missionary overtones, these schemes alleviate food poverty. What is certain, too,

is that Construyendo Sueños and evangelical Christian initiatives like it present a formidable

challenge to the social role and traditional authority of the Catholic Church.

34

The Latest Revolution

An important final point is that these community kitchens have also contributed an awful lot

to the enrichment of Peruvian gastronomy. With kitchens being run by women migrants to

the city, eclectic recipes hitherto confined to their specific region have made their way into

the national and global gastronomic mainstream. Hence, for example, the rise and rise of

quinoa as a favourite ‘superfood’ of NASA spacemen and Hollywood actresses alike.

Peru’s recent ‘food boom’ or ‘gastronomic revolution’ has firmly positioned the country on

the map of global culinary excellence and the nation’s tourist board has spent many millions

of US dollars in promoting Peru as a ‘gastronomic destination’.

But the country’s food boom, feted by the nation’s tourist board and epicureans alike, is

problematic. Like the ascent of quinoa – produced in Peru and neighbouring Bolivia – it’s a

phenomenon driven towards export abroad and elites at home.

Just as high global quinoa prices put the crop out of reach for the people who grow it, so the

Peruvian ‘gastronomic revolution’ neglects its earthier origins. It was the very migration from

the mountains and consequent dependence on the rickety rackety community kitchens which

kick-started the country’s so-called ‘food boom’. Women from far-flung villages brought

local recipes with them. They cooked and served these in comedores populares to nourish but

also to preserve diverse, centuries-old gastronomic traditions. These recipes constituted so

much more than a mere ‘plate of beans’.

They may not boast Michelin stars, then, but the humble comedores are the key to food

revolution in the country. And yet it seems, just like the other revolutions in Peru’s recent

history – be they Maoist or neoliberal – that the poor women of the comedores do not fit

comfortably into the blueprint of the ‘gastronomic revolution’.

Perhaps this is no bad thing, though. Perhaps it just demonstrates that bringing people

together and getting them fed nutritiously is the main goal of Peru’s community kitchens. It is

a simple mission with no need for grand slogans.

35

Applicability in the UK

Admittedly, the contextual differences between the UK and Peru are striking. Yet despite the

more obvious disparities in wealth, development, culture and history, the following points are

pertinent:

In Peru, food security initiatives such as comedores populares are provisioned with

non-perishable foodstuffs at the expense of local government and guaranteed by

national government. In the UK, food banks are run on a voluntarist basis.

In the UK, more people have access to the broader structures of a welfare state, which

plays a major role in combating poverty. In Peru access to a more limited provision of

healthcare, social security and insurance is, in itself, much more restricted.

In Peru, the entire political system is bedevilled with clientelism, corruption and

patronage to a greater extent than the UK. Historically, the Peruvian state (both local

and national) is arguably more inclined towards instituting populist social measures.

Nonetheless, lessons can be learned.

The applicability of egalitarian eating models in the UK is clear. Currently, food poverty and

food insecurity in the UK is addressed via a network of food banks administered by the

Trussell Trust. According to the Trust, 13 million people live below the poverty line in the

UK and an increasing number of these people are being referred to food banks for emergency

food. In 2013-14, foodbanks fed just under a million people nationwide.

The way the food bank model works does not necessarily need radical overhaul. Groups such

as schools, churches, businesses and individuals donate non-perishable foods to food banks –

typically cereals, rice and tinned foodstuffs. Care professionals such as doctors, health

visitors, social workers, CAB and the police identify people in crisis and issue them with a

foodbank voucher. People then turn up to their nearest food bank and redeem their voucher

for three days’ emergency food.

But while this model is admirable in its altruism, Manna believes it can be improved in

several key ways which will enhance nutrition, transferable skills and community:

1) FRESH IS BEST

By contrast to the ‘community kitchen’ model, UK food banks give recipients non-

perishable food. In Peru’s comedores, the nutritional value of the food is greater,

incorporating fresh vegetables and even fruit into tasty meals (see image below). In

the UK, there is a need to work more closely with supermarkets and grocers to ensure

that a larger proportion of the food that they dole out is fresh, thus improving the

health and wellbeing of recipients through ensuring greater nutritional value. This

would require better dialogue between food banks and donors to ensure that surplus

fresh foodstuffs like vegetables are donated and dispersed more efficiently.

36

Figure 24 A young volunteer at a community kitchen in downtown Lima

2) COOKERY SKILLS

In speaking to food bank volunteers in the UK, Manna volunteers have been

confronted with many stories of people simply not knowing how to incorporate such

food into a meal or – worse still – not being able to prepare the most basic non-

perishables on their own (for instance people boiling bags of rice in their kettles).

For this reason, it is vital that food banks come to resemble community kitchens more,

incorporating a kitchen where food can be cooked and prepared as a meal. A good

solution would be recipients cooking meals with food bank volunteers and thus

gaining transferable cookery skills. Recipients of food aid from food banks could

cook, instructed and supervised by volunteers (as shown in the image below). At the

very least, food bank recipients should be given cards instructing how to incorporate

non-perishable food into a meal which also includes fresh produce.

37

Figure 25 Cooking up a treat in Puno

3) REDISCOVERING COMMUNITY

Food banks dole out non-fresh food to often-stigmatised recipients. What we need is

fresh food and people eating together: in short, to rediscover our sense of community

around food. As well as food security, the community kitchen model in Peru and

elsewhere brings community, cohesion, pride, and culture to otherwise hopeless

people and places. As the image below illustrates, community kitchens bring together

people from across age and gender boundaries and unifies them in the common,

catalytic, productive purpose of producing and eating good food together.

The nominal fee for a simple and hearty plate of food or soup at a community kitchen

not only covers costs but removes the stigma of the hand-out. It also gives people a

sense of ownership in a communal venture. The UK food bank model needs to

resemble community kitchens more. The basic act of communally preparing and

sharing a meal can have far-reaching consequences in combating loneliness, isolation,

mental illness, and dislocation and creating a sense of community.

38

Figure 26 Community pride and cohesion

Figure 27 Communal dining in the UK

39

Implementing these findings

This report will be disseminated via social media, in the first instance, and then via radio and

television coverage. The author’s tweets via @drbryceevans and Manna tweet via

@mannacomkitchen.

It has been submitted to a number of MPs, councillors and volunteers interested in food

poverty in the UK and in the English North West.

In particular, the author has been in discussion with the Office of The Right Honourable

Frank Field MP, Member of Parliament for Birkenhead and co-chair of the cross-party group

of MPs and Peers whose findings culminated in the ‘Feeding Britain’ report.

One of the recommendations of ‘Feeding Britain’ is the formation of a national network of

groups working towards alleviating food poverty. Manna Community Kitchen will form part

of that network and contribute towards the debate on how UK food banks can function more

efficiently and sustainably. It is hoped that this report and its recommendations will exert a

strong influence on this debate and the future of UK food poverty initiatives.

40

Acknowledgements

Heartfelt thanks to the wonderful, inspirational Marian Carey; Beatriz Aybar and family,

particularly Juan and Haydee Aybar; Victor Ramos; Ned Riley; Amy Powell; Paola Fatorini;

Bruno Portillo; Vilma Huanan Cotero; Paulina Basquez Vargas; Maria Julia Montalban

Rosalez; Sara Montauti; Dan Kasnich; Ester Pisedo Sena; Maximiliana Jarampa Laurente;

Estela Cisneros Daura; Nancy Moreno Huerta; Fr Ed O’Connell; Narda Marquez; Lucilla

Cabana; Justina Barboza Chavez; Fabiola Huaman; Catalina Montoya; Harj Garcha; Berna

Rios Escobedo; Claudia Quiroz Pachecho; Leonid Lecca; Hilda Valdivia; Fernando Valle;

and Hildebrando Castro-Pozo Chávez.

41

Further Reading

Books and articles:

Babb, Florence. Between Field and Cooking Pot: The Political Economy of Marketwomen in

Peru (Texas, 2010).

Blondet, Cecilia and Montero, Carmen, Hoy menú popular: comedores en Lima (Lima,

1995).

Carrión, Julio. The Fujimori Legacy: The Rise of Electoral Authoritarianism in Peru

(Pennsylvania, 2006).

De Soto, Fernando. The Other Path: the economic answer to terrorism (Lima, 1989).

Kogan, Luiba. ‘Soup Kitchens, Women and Social Policy: Studies from Peru’, Development

in Practice, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Nov., 1998), pp. 471-478.

McKenzie Atack, Peter. Caesarism, Fujimori and the Transformation of Peru into a

Neoliberal Order (dissertation, Carleton University, Canada, 2006).

Minaya Rodríguez, Jacqueline. ‘Thou shalt not kill with hunger or bullets: Soup kitchens, the

space for memory and the notion of justice in El Agustino ex dirigentas (Proceedings of the

University of San Marcos Memory Group, 2013).

Rousseau, Stéphanie. Women's Citizenship in Peru: The Paradoxes of Neopopulism in Latin

America (Basingstoke, 2009).

Stark, Orin, De Gregori, Carlos, and Kirk, Robin eds., The Peru Reader: History, Culture,

Politics (Durham, North Carolina, 2005).

Stern, Steve ed. Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1985-1995 (London,

1998).

Walton, John. Free Markets and Food Riots: The Politics of Global Adjustment (New York,

2011).

Selected Web Sources:

Child Malnutrition in Peru (Guardian newspaper): (http://www.theguardian.com/global-

development-professionals-network/2014/oct/16/nutrition-stunting-development-peru-india).

Corruption and Vaso de Leche (La Republica newspaper): http://www.larepublica.pe/18-08-

2014/licitaciones-y-vaso-de-leche-estarian-detras-de-asesinatos-en-amarilis

42

‘Feeding Britain’ report: https://foodpovertyinquiry.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/food-

poverty-feeding-britain-final.pdf

Food banks in Britain (Trussell Trust): http://www.trusselltrust.org/foodbank-projects.

Travelogue of this trip (via personal blog): http://drbryceevans.wordpress.com/

Qali Warma scheme (Peruvian government): http://www.qaliwarma.gob.pe/.

Social role of the Catholic Church (Pope Francis):

http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-

francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html

Other sites detailing Peru’s community kitchens:

http://www.globalenvision.org/2008/08/07/cooking-hope-empowering-women-through-

community-kitchens-peru

http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/801

http://krytyka.org/does-participation-empower-the-example-of-community-kitchens-in-lima-

peru/

http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ib9_peru.pdf

http://gencen.isp.msu.edu/documents/Working_Papers/WP246.pdf

http://www.mef.gob.pe/contenidos/pol_econ/documentos/C_Populares_J_Garrett.pdf