Our Story

In 2013, a small group of four people started the first food banking activities in Albania through Foundation Food Bank Albania. As co-founders and co-leaders of it, we worked hard and saw it grow successfully across the years. In just 7 years, local food banking efforts were initiated in 7 cities across Albania.

As the opportunities grew, so did the need for food from the partnering NGOs. We understood that we needed to look at innovation and entrepreneurship. We didn’t simply need more food. We needed to find new ways to secure it. We needed strong teams and sound plans to distribute it effectively. We understood that hunger, as a main issue in Albania, was not noticeable. We also understood that money in itself was not the solution, but partnerships and people-focused systems in order to change the still current status quo of malnutrition in Albania.

In 2021, two of the initial team of Foundation Food Bank Albania, took another step and launched Foundation Feeding Albania. Feeding Albania doesn’t only support different NGOs and marginalized groups across the country with food; it also works at expanding current small innovation initiatives and is working to create a think-tank on food security in the country.

Through saving food and redirecting it to the people, much benefit comes to the environment as well. Food banking prevents food from taking up landfill space and lowers the methane impact on the atmosphere, as wasted food is responsible for about 8-10% of greenhouse gases.

Feeding Albania has renewed current food banking practices in Albania while staying true to the values of food banking work. Through our network, we are now able to tackle poverty in different ways than before and are able to reach deeper into places where very few are able to go. Hunger is very good at hiding in plain view.

Unfortunately, in the more than 15 years involved firsthand in poverty and hunger alleviation, we continue to witness retreat instead of advancement when it comes to hunger and poverty. Poverty continues to grow, and now the recent inflation and raised cost of living threaten to cause regional hunger in Albania. We are witnessing a time of much hardship across our network of NGOs while our supporting possibilities are limited.

Will Feeding Albania succeed? Will we be able to start strong and growing local feeding initiatives in the country that will tackle both hunger and be environmentally friendly? We encourage you to support our network as we work to push further the current efforts for food security and fighting food waste and loss in Albania.