CRI听力:NGO Helps Fight Hunger in Hong Kong

Founded in 2009, Feeding Hong Kong collects surplus quality food from manufacturers, growers, processors, distributors and retailers every day and delivers it to a network of partner charities.

Now they are able to provide over 72,000 meals per month to 60 charities.

Richard Lord is a director of the organization. "There is a lot of good food that goes to waste, but at the same time, about 18 percent of people in Hong Kong don't enjoy what we call 'food security', they are not guaranteed three meals a day. Many of the retailers and distributors in Hong Kong will remove their products from shelves a number of days before 'used by date' or 'best by date', so a lot of that food has a period of which is still usable from the time that leaves supermarket and gets into our warehouse."

Richard Lord says they are also doing food safety education and giving food handling guidelines to make sure the food is of good quality and nutritious.

As an NGO, the operation of Feeding Hong Kong depends heavily on the participation of volunteers. Jarodine Chan is one of them.

"We are based in the Yau Tong warehouse, where we wait for all the volunteers to collect the baked goods at the end of a trading day. We are there to make sure the records being kept properly, so that bread are collected away to make sure, we know which type of bread is separated so they are donated to charities and meet their requirements, for example, some require no sugar. "

Candy Choi works at Hong Fook Church, which helps to deliver food to the less privileged families in the community. She says she is very thankful for what Feeding Hong Kong has been doing.

"I remember very clearly that we only got canned food at first, but now, they provide us many different kinds of food and snacks. Dozens of families have been benefited, and they are grateful, because otherwise, they don't have money to buy snacks or try something special."

After five years of development and expansion, Feeding Hong Kong now has received wide support from companies and the society. It is a member of the Global Food Banking Network, an international organization committed to reducing food waste and fight against poverty worldwide.

For CRI, this is Li Jing in Hong Kong.