From food bank to quarter restaurant
Showcase
The life's work of Dutch managers Clara and Sjaak Sies
What is bred in the bone will come out in the flesh; and a good thing too in the case of Clara and Sjaak Sies. In 2002, they were at the start of the Food Bank movement in the Netherlands, and since their departure, they have gone on to found the Stichting Gaarkeuken Rotterdam (Rotterdam Food Kitchen Foundation). ‘Actually, it is scandalous that this needs to be done, but increasing numbers of people are getting into trouble’.
Clara and Sjaak can hardly be compared to Bill and Melissa Gates, who use their massive fortune to try and make the world a slightly better place. When it comes to problems, these Rotterdam residents have hit rock bottom themselves in the past. They were once the proud managers of a clothing and jewellery shop on the Dordtselaan, but the business went bankrupt in 1986. Says Clara in retrospect: ‘There was not much financial relief in those days. We managed to clear our debts in four years, but then what do you do? Neither of us had finished our studies and according to the powers that be, we were already too old for anyone to want to employ us. Obviously we were on social security, but that did not feel right; the thing is that you feel you want to give something back
Martin Luther King
Well, this ‘give something back’ thing may have got a little out of hand, but it eventually brought the Sies couple royal rewards: the Martin Luther King Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as meetings with multiple ministers and the King. There will also be a book soon, but we’ll get back to that. What it has not yielded is financial gain; ‘We never built up a pension, so now we have to make do with a double old-age pension plus a few allowances’. Clara definitely doesn’t let it get her down: ‘We have lived in Vreewijk for 35 years now, which is absolutely fine’, says the mother of five and grandmother of ten.
Anyway, back to 1999, when their wish to return the favour to society materialised in the form of the Minus-Plus Foundation. Says Clara: ‘We wanted to find a way for people who had too much to share their possessions with people who were living in poverty: furniture, clothing, you name it. That enterprise was not too successful, but fortunately we met Peter Koppert of the Koppert Cress nursery, and he came up with the idea of providing food for families who needed it. The Rodenburg bakery from Berkel en Rodenrijs later also joined this initiative. We took care of distribution, and in this way we provided extra food for thirty destitute families’
Heart-warming
A visit to a Food Bank in Belgium in late 2001 turned out to be an eye opener: ‘What they were doing there was downright fantastic. All kinds of major food businesses took their surplus products or products with faulty packaging there. We were incredibly enthusiastic, and in early 2002 we founded the Dutch Food Bank. We sent out letters to all the major food producers in and around Rotterdam. This was greeted with a deafening silence’. Then an article published by the Rotterdams Dagblad brought about a huge change for the better: ‘All of a sudden, the telephone was ringing non-stop: someone reported the availability of a full pallet of a particular product and somebody else was willing to provide other goods. A group of forty people who had followed the Jumpstarters course adopted us, and each one of them deployed some kind of creative action to raise at least €1,000 for investment. At last we had the funds we needed to buy a proper van and have a logo developed. The
Port of Rotterdam allowed us to rent 2000m2 of storage for a peppercorn rent of €1 per year, and Unilever gave us some office equipment. All of this was really heart-warming’.
Out of that first Rotterdam Food Bank grew another, then a third, and so it went on. Now there are 171 Food Banks and ten distribution centres in the Netherlands, all staffed by around 13,000 volunteers. More than 40,000 families are supported on a weekly basis, and in 2020 a massive 44 million products were handed out. While this is not exactly something a country should be proud of, there is no doubt that Clara and Sjaak can be justly proud of their life’s work
1,000 meals a week
In 2011 and 2014 respectively, Clara and Sjaak bid farewell to the Food Bank: ‘The operation was growing bigger and bigger. Professionalisation was necessary, and we are simply not the right people for endless meetings’. But as we said before, what is bred in the bone will come out in the flesh, and so the Sies couple started the Stichting Gaarkeuken Rotterdam (Rotterdam Food Kitchen Foundation) in 2017: ‘After all, some people are not eligible for the Food Bank, perhaps because their income is just a little too high or their paper work is not in order. We provide something in the region of a thousand meals a week through four quarter restaurants in Rotterdam. Two courses cost €4.50, and if you can’t pay, then you don’t’.
Clara is certain that this initiative is not going to grow into a much larger operation: ‘As things stand, we can manage this organisation, which relies on 35 volunteers and financial support from a few funds. The nice thing about it is that the social aspect also plays a part, the Food Kitchen provides a meeting point within the city quarter. Contacts are made and people start to help one other. There is more to it than just the food’
‘The story of crumbs and bread’
Then there is that book, which is scheduled to see the light of day later this year, published by De Meent: ‘The story of crumbs and bread’, the life story of Clara and Sjaak Sies. ‘Not for our own fame and glory, but hopefully as a source of inspiration for others. We were also once in the ‘prospectless and unemployable’ category, but that doesn’t mean you can’t lead a meaningful life. We wanted, and want, to give shape to our own responsibility and help other people. For us this stems from our Christianity, but anyone can do it, irrespective of their faith, persuasion or origins – you simply have to do it’.
By the way, in order for the book to really see the light of day and be distributed as a gift with 40,000 Unilever hampers from the Food Banks, the Sies couple, who recently celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary, could do with a few more sponsors. So – reach out to Clara and Sjaak!
