Covid-19 Prompts
New Models of Food Assistance in Hong Kong
By Hao Yingshan, Dong Xinyue,
Zhou Yichen, Zeng Yalin
Log in as a member, select the food, swipe the card, and pick the meal boxes. This is all people have to do to receive food assistance contactlessly amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Just like picking snacks or drinks from a vending machine, this is a new way of providing free meal boxes to the needy with support from Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs).
Nancy Leung, 35, used to work at a local restaurant. However, the Covid-19 outbreak caused her to lose the job, making her one of the people in need of food assistance under the newly launched Automated Food Dispenser Service (AFDS) scheme.
"The meal boxes helped me get through the tough times," Ms Leung said. "I can pick up my food at any time and not feel embarrassed by people looking at me,” she added.
An Automated Food Dispenser located in Kowloon City. (Credit@ Susan Hao)
NGOs face the challenge of surging demand for food aids amid the pandemic
The demand for food assistance in Hong Kong increased significantly this year, as the pandemic has led to bankruptcies of many companies and individuals, bringing a new wave of unemployment.
Heather Tse, the department manager from Food Angel, a food-aid NGO, said that the number of people who contact them for food assistance has risen from around 1,300 families before the epidemic to over 10,000 families nowadays. “The number of meals and food packages provided by our organization each day has also greatly increased,” he added.
According to the Census and Statistics Department in Hong Kong, the unemployment rate doubled in 2020 compared to 2019 and reached 6.1% in the first half of 2021, the highest since 2005.
The rising unemployment has brought up a group of new poor people who need social assistance, including food aid. The “Hong Kong Poverty Report: COVID-19'S Effects on Unemployment and the Poor” published by OXFAM Hong Kong showed that the number of people in need of social assistance due to unemployment in the first half of 2020 increased by 58.8% compared to the first half of 2019, of which the number of unemployed within six months increased by 163%.
Young people ages 20 to 29 have almost always accounted for the largest proportion of the unemployed. However, after the epidemic, the proportion of unemployment among middle-aged and elderly individuals (age group 30-39, 40-49, and 50-59) rose sharply.
Apart from the increase of the poor, Covid-19 has turned the original middle class into new receivers of food assistance. According to the survey results from multiple NGOs, the food-aid beneficiaries have shifted from grassroots who have little income or education to the former middle class who used to earn HK$ 20,000 a month before losing their jobs during the pandemic.
A large number of new food-aid recipients after the outbreak were former crew members of the now-defunct Cathay Dragon Airlines, or employees of some travel agencies that were shut down due to the epidemic.
In addition to the economic downturn, severe restrictions on public gatherings caused by the Covid-19 pandemic have put a lot of pressure on food aid NGOs. Concerns about food safety and hygiene have forced them to suspend volunteer work, leaving them facing severe manpower shortages as demand increases.
Cheng Ka Hing, a 66-year-old homeless man, had previously accepted the lunch boxes from different NGOs, including St. James' Settlement, Food For Good, and Food Angel.
“In the few months after the outbreak, the amount of food I could get has decreased significantly,” said Mr Cheng. "I only get two or three meals a week, and for the rest of the time, I eat bread to survive," he added.
Starting from September 2020, with the outbreak somewhat under control, NGOs began to resume food aid on a large scale or launch new assistance programs.
NGOs face the difficulties and explore new methods
With the concerns about the pandemic and growing needs, it was not feasible for Food Angel to keep the food delivery way as before -- gathering people to eat hot meals in the community centers at the fixed time every day.
Were they to keep spreading kindness, they must adjust to the situation and reconstruct their distribution way. Thus, they set up a new policy that people shall come to pick food twice a week: on Monday, the needy can get the meals for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday while on their Thursday pick, food for the rest of the week can be collected. Unlike before, the meal boxes can be frozen to sustain for four days. Takers just need to keep them in the fridge and heat them when eating.
However, this did not seem to be enough. Although this change allowed Food Angel's operation to survive the challenges of the epidemic, it also brought heavy pressure to the daily operation and management. In this case, they had to arrange for more staff to control distance and order, and spend more time distributing meal boxes to the constant influx of people.
In addition, the needy expanded to include the middle class who lost their jobs in the pandemic. These people may find it very embarrassing to receive food aid in the public and therefore need a more appropriate approach.
How to better serve the need? The NGO turned its attention to a more automatic and digital way: the Automated Food Dispenser Service (AFDS), which was launched in 2020 with the funding from Hong Kong Jockey Club. Similar to a vending machine, plenty of meal dispensing devices were placed at a number of districts. Eligible members, such as unemployed or underemployed families, can use their digital membership card to go to the self-service dispensing machine and scan the QR code on the card to get the free cook-chill meals at any time.
Easy steps of using the Automated Food Dispenser Service (AFDS).
At present, the food dispenser machines are distributed in a total of 23 locations in seven districts of Hong Kong, including Yuen Long, Tuen Mun, Kwun Tong, and other areas with higher poverty populations. To date, the AFDS program has served more than 280,000 frozen meals to 3,800 people.
In order to cover more poverty-stricken areas, the program will cooperate with ParknShop and Link to place more machines in their shopping malls. By 2023, a total of 50 machines are expected to be deployed in various venues across Hong Kong.
Joining the Jockey Club Food Assistance Programme, Food for Good, an NGO founded in 2013, also launched the Hot Meal Service. This service offers free hot meals prepared by community kitchens for individuals and families living in underprivileged enthronements for up to a year.
Hot meal services are offered in nine districts including Kwun Tong, Sham Shui Po, Wong Tai Sin, Kowloon City, etc. In addition to providing hot meals to more people in need, the service project also aims at creating more job vacancies and helping alleviate the stress of unemployment.
Volunteers are packing food boxes at Food for Good Yau Tong Community Kitchen. (Credit@ Gloria Zhou and Felicity Dong)
New food-aid measures likely maintained despite various concerns
Food Angel and Food for Good are not the only NGOs looking for new ways to provide food assistance. In June 2021, the St James' Settlement launched the "Food-to-Give" pilot scheme to distribute food assistance allowance through the e-payment platform. Unlike previous schemes such as food banks, the new scheme does not directly provide food assistance, but allows people at the grassroots level to receive food allowances electronically. Beneficiaries only need to use Octopus to receive the subsidy of HK$ 400 per week for 8 consecutive weeks and then purchase food by themselves at the fast-food restaurants or supermarkets.
Ms Lee Yuk-chee, executive director of St James' Settlement, said "This will help to improve the accessibility and choice of food, and take care of the dignity of the beneficiaries, so as to help more people in need."
While NGOs see these new automated and digital inspirations as good changes and plan to keep them, related concerns have emerged.
While Food Angel intended to place more food dispensing machines across Hong Kong in phases, the organization also expressed financial concerns about making the program sustainable over the long term. The Jockey Club planned to support the ADFS program for three years, which means the NGO needs to find other fund sources afterward.
According to Ms Tse Heather, the possibility of relying on funds from the government would be quite low. “Government funding is not easy to get, we need to fill in lots of documents and wait for a long time.” She was also afraid that the funding may come too late to cover the needy.
The length of the food assistance period is another concern. Mr Cheng Ka Hing said that many food aid programs are short-lived, lasting only a few weeks and providing limited help. “Food aid programs would have been better if it had lasted longer, otherwise I often didn't have enough to eat during the transition period,” he added.
According to the analysis of OXFAM Hong Kong based on data from the Census and Statistics Department’s General Household Survey, 33,100 people from poor households (i.e. those whose monthly income is lower than 50% of the median household income) were unemployed for three to six months in the second quarter of 2020, up 252% from the same period last year. Meanwhile, 24,200 poor people have been unemployed for more than six months. Accordingly, the number of people who remained unemployed for more than 3 months accounted for 52.4% of the total number of unemployed people from poor households.
“The government's financial support to NGOs is limited to short-term food assistance programs, which is not helpful for the increase in the length of unemployment,“ said Vincent Cheng Wing-shun, the Legislative Council member for Kowloon West. “However, those NGOs that provide long-term food aid and have established scale need more government funding to move their programs forward and increase the number of distribution points," he added.
He also believed that asset limits for scheme applicants should be relaxed to make services available to more people.
Although the pandemic has pushed for the digitization of food aid in Hong Kong, it is still in its infancy. Compared to Singapore, there are some similarities and differences in the ways of providing food assistance. Hong Kong shares the same dignity-caring philosophy with Singapore in some of the assisting methods, such as distributing valued cards for the need to buy food. Meanwhile, they both worked in a cooperated way with food delivery companies or small restaurants to increase efficiency and serve more people.
There are some differences in the technology adopted by the two countries. Unlike Hong Kon NGOs utilizing vending machines and Octopus, Singapore NGOs took the advantage of smartphone APPs to make the assistance even more flexible. One reason for this discrepancy is digital literacy, especially for the elderly. Singapore has established its Smart Nation and Digital Government Office and held workshops to teach more than 100,000 senior citizens about the use of intelligent technology. In addition, a series of incentives and policies have also been designed to encourage more elderly people to use smartphones.
“In Hong Kong, digital skills still have a low penetration among the elderly,” said Ms Tse Heather. “To better implement electronic food aid, more education needs to be provided to them.”