One of Toulouse's self-service hanging baskets.
-
MDC31
After the “hanging” coffee or baguette, self-service food baskets have appeared in Toulouse.
Who wants to give, who wants to use, it's anonymous and simple.
This new form of solidarity is there to counter the effects of an interminable health crisis.
Now, when Daniel and his wife do their shopping, there is a place in their tote for the “hanging baskets”.
They know that in their rue Négreneys, between a city and a residential area, on the way back, they will come across one of those shelves with recycled wooden crates which are blooming on the sidewalks of Toulouse and symbolize a new form of solidarity.
Their operation is extremely simple: who wants to put down what he wants - food or hygiene products - and who needs it, uses it.
“It's 100% altruistic, 100% selfless, 100% anonymous,” summarizes Nadia Burgade, project manager at Maison des Citoyens 31, one of the four associations * behind this mutual aid initiative.
A project dictated by “the urgency of the health crisis”, and the concern to see the ranks of people in precarious food growing every day, with “students, intermittents” for example.
It doesn't matter who is using
The hanging baskets do not bother with bureaucracy: if requests for authorization to put the shelves are instructed by the town hall, the solidarity structures continue while waiting to appear, rue Bayard or in Saint-Aubin no later than Wednesday or again, logically, in front of the Chouette Coop de Marengo where two beautiful, carefully wrapped croissants opened the crates.
No problem of paternity either: "We are inspired by the Rennes experience of the first confinement and the Italians who lowered baskets from the windows of their buildings", explains Nadia Burgade.
Finally, the initiative does not care about "what will be said".
“There are people who ask us if we are sure that the baskets benefit those who need them,” says the host.
We answer "no, but we don't care" ".
Discreet solidarity
Daniel admits that he glances at the shelf when he drives by "out of curiosity, to see if the baskets are empty".
But he would fear to meet a beneficiary one day.
"Not only, that does not interest me, but it could have a voyeuristic or unhealthy side", estimates the retiree.
Accustomed to the associative system, he is convinced that these baskets benefit the inhabitants of the district who might hesitate to appear in other donation structures.
He likes the idea of being able to give out time slots without constraint and the symbol of the young people of the Toulouse Nord prevention club who built the shelves.
For now, volunteers are reloading the crates to prime the solidarity pump.
“But anyone can join the community of anonymous hangers-on and donate all day until 5.30pm,” insists Nadia Burgade.
The “suspended” secretly dream of school outings transformed into donation tours or benefactor companies imagining shelves that are always green but more robust.
Toulouse
Confinement in Toulouse: From chefs to the stoves for the homeless, here is the astonishing (and lasting) adventure of the Belles gamelles
Society
Coronavirus: "A part of the population has fallen into extreme poverty, that's the real impact of the crisis"
Covid 19
Society
Coronavirus
Toulouse
Live the city better
Solidarity
Poverty