Solidarity kitchens: how pandemic food assistance developed to offer much more

From global leader to families in need

Brazil was once a global leader in the fight against hunger. Between 2004 and 2013, government policies aimed at eradicating poverty reduced the proportion of households experiencing hunger from 9.5% to 4.2%.1 But the dismantling of these policies by the governments of presidents Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro, alongside economic crises, worsening social inequalities, and the pandemic, took a heavy toll.

Food insecurity rose from 36.7% in 2018 to 58.7% of the Brazilian population in 2022.1 In the six months from November 2021 to April 2022, the number of people going hungry jumped from 19.1 million to 33.1 million.1 “Faced with all this social tragedy, it was left to civil society to mitigate the problem of hunger in the country,” says Aline Rissatto Teixeira, a nutritionist from the School of Public Health at the University of São Paulo. Leme and Oliveira’s restaurant was based in Vila Medeiros, and this inspired them to start their project.

Quebrada Alimentada started with the two of them serving about 60 lunch boxes to families registered at a local centre that offered educational activities to children and adolescents from low income families in São Paulo. After a photo went viral on social media, demand increased. “Suddenly, we were producing up to 200 lunch boxes,” Leme says.

Other restaurants started giving them stock that they couldn’t use because of the pandemic. This resulted in more than 100 000 meals being served between 2020 and 2023. Still, she says, “at one point, the demand for food greatly exceeded our capacity, and we were no longer able to identify those who needed it the most.”

To meet this demand, she contacted primary care clinics (Unidades Basicas de Saude, UBS) in Vila Medeiros, which were seeing many malnourished people at that time. Only one agreed to join the project, but it was enough to see them through a difficult time, says Leme. “They began identifying the most vulnerable families and referring them to our restaurant to take the lunch boxes.”

Among the most vulnerable were those in Jardim Julieta, a new informal settlement that sprung up as a direct consequence of the pandemic. Isolation measures to contain the spread of coronavirus hit Brazilian families hard. The economy sank, and people who had lost their jobs or were evicted from their homes began to occupy vacant land in northern São Paulo. In the beginning there were 30 families living there; it currently houses more than 840.2

Valdirene Ferreira Frazão, who serves as Jardim Julieta’s de facto leader, moved there in May 2020 after losing her job in the events industry. She weeded and cleared the land with her two children. With emergency aid from the federal government, she built a shack in two days. “Today we have electricity, water, and sewage, and we are improving the quality of the houses. Our idea is to stay; we don’t want to leave,” she says.

Quebrada Alimentada has been vital to keeping these residents alive and is now offering them hope for the future. In late 2023, Frazão suggested that Leme and Oliveira build a community kitchen that could double up as a cook school in Jardim Julieta. After raising money through crowdfunding—and dipping into their own pockets—they were able to begin construction on a building for the project a few months later.

“Our goal is to prepare and serve 500 meals every day, contributing to alleviating hunger among the residents of Jardim Julieta and neighbouring areas,” Frazão tells The BMJ. “The space will also offer professional training in gastronomy to the people of the neighbourhood.”

From one kitchen to a movement

Leme, Oliveira, and Frazão aren’t alone. An estimated 2000 similar solidarity kitchens sprung up across Brazil around the same time,3 many of them organised by the Homeless Workers’ Movement (MTST in Portuguese). The MTST launched its first solidarity kitchen in Rio de Janeiro, looking to feed those who found themselves homeless and jobless, just like in Jardem Julieta. Around 30 more MTST kitchens are open across 11 states, all displaying a “free lunch” sign.4

These kitchens have inspired a new federal government programme. The National Solidarity Kitchen Programme was launched by Presidente Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva in July 2023 to support initiatives that produce at least 100 meals a day and operate five times a week.5 The Jardim Julieta community kitchen-school, once built, is one of those set to benefit.

The federal government programme comes at a vital time—more than 40 000 families are estimated to have become homeless between March 2020 and February 2023 and are now living in informal settlements across the country.6

Besides fighting food insecurity, solidarity kitchens may also help improve health through better diets, researchers say. “Many of them use fresh, locally grown, and organic food,” says Denise de Sordi, a researcher at the vice presidency of environment, healthcare, and health promotion at Oswaldo Cruz Foundation.

“Solidarity kitchens also help establish a daily and ongoing connection with vulnerable populations, such as homeless people and immigrants,” says Leme, “These are people who are not accustomed or don’t know how to seek health services, and the kitchens provide them with access to health resources through food distribution.”

She recalls that during the pandemic health professionals from their partner health centre assisted people in the lunch box queue. As a result of those interactions, Quebrada Alimentada is now working with the Hospital Sírio-Libanês, one of the best in Latin America, to analyse the effect of Jardim Julieta’s community kitchen-school on health. They want to determine whether health indicators—such as obesity, diabetes, and cholesterol levels—as well as socioeconomic conditions among residents improve.

Says Leme, “We’re interested in whether children, by frequently eating quality food, show improvements in school performance, and whether there is an increase in parental income and better housing conditions.”