On Oct 15 and 16, Second Harvest Asia held Asia’s first food bank workshop and forum. Food bank representatives from seven countries got together in Hong Kong to attend the workshop. At the 16th forum, we had many attendees from different countries, but primarily from Hong Kong. We felt their growing interests in food banking in Hong Kong.

Asia's First Food Bank Forum in Hong Kong!
We had seven speakers from three places: the U.S., Hong Kong, and the Philippines. The speeches covered various topics from humanitarian logistics to CSR by a local corporation. We were thankful for a great turnout at the event! Thank you, Hong Kong!

Speakers
Speakers at Asia's First Food Bank Forum in Hong Kong
Left side on the top: Connie Ng from St. James’ Settlement People’s Food Bank speaks about their history of St. James’ Settlement and food banking in Hong Kong. They value their social workers’ role to provide one-stop service to their clients. One of their challenges is to provide more nutritional food. 

Left side at the bottomGabrielle Kristein from Feeding Hong Kong talks about food waste in Hong Kong, food rescue program, and food bank program. Distributors are a big channel to source food for its food bank program since most of food are imported in Hong Kong.


Center on the topNorm Gold, Chief Operations Officer of Feed More, talks about the history of food banking in the U.S. and food banks today. Food banks started in 60s in Phoenix Arizona. Today, strong focus on children, mothers, and seniors. Strong cooperation with the government.


Center in the middleChristine Fang, Chief Executive of The Hong Kong Council of Social Service gives an opening speech to celebrate Asia’s first food bank forum to discuss food banking to cope with the poverty in Asia.


Center at the bottomBarnabas from HSBC: The bank is working on sustainability issues: sustainable finance, footprint management, community investment.


Right side on the topMich Mizushima, Chief Logistics Officer of Fritz Institute is presenting about challenges of providing humanitarian relief. Mich shared challenges in the humanitarian logistics industry such as volume of aid supplies sent to disaster areas, unsolicited goods, insufficient trained staff members. She mentions a possibility of more cooperation between food banks and international NGOs in case of disasters.


Right side, the second from the topSecond Harvest Asia Chair Charles McJilton speaks about how we started research about food banks in Asia and our goal to build a platform to share best practices of food banking in Asia.


Right side, the second from the bottomVincent Lazatin, Executive Director of Transparency and Accountability Network. “Dealing with Corruption” Fascinating story of text book counting project with efforts to reduce lost text books because of corruption. His approach is work with the government collaboratively instead of accusing them, and work toward a shared vision. 

Right side on the bottomThe Hong Kong Council of Social Service Chief Officer Mariana Chan talks about the need for food assistance in Hong Kong and showcase facts about the poverty: 1.15 million people are under the poverty line in Hong Kong and the poverty rate 17.1 percent; Past 10 years, the income discrepancy has broadened; Lower food expenditure despite the rising other expenditures at households.

We would like to extend our big thank-you to The Hong Kong Council of Social Service for the great venue. Without their help, this event would not have been successful.