Anna Stöcher/Austrian Red Cross
Daniela Zoritsa stands in a crowd of cheerful boys and girls waiting for the mobile soup kitchen with the Red Cross sign on it. This spot in the centre of Lacarak, a town in the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina, has been chosen by the Red Cross for food distributions.
Like the other children, Daniela, 13, is poorly dressed. She wears a big dirty coat, tied at the middle with a rope to prevent it from falling off her fragile figure. She looks friendly. On her face, covered with little scratches, is a beaming smile. But her voice is harsh when asked why she is not at school: "Because we sleep with pigs and we do not have money for school or clothes!" .
Every morning she comes to this distribution point to receive hot meals from the Red Cross for her family of five - the only food they have during the day.
"As long as the governments of Serbia and Montenegro are unable to provide food security for all, or to regularly pay pensions and allowances, and as long as international humanitarian aid decreases, the need for food, especially through the coming winter months, remains urgent," the Red Cross in Yugoslavia says.
With the winter approaching and vulnerable people in Vojvodina increasingly unable to cope, the Red Cross is appealing for additional funds to support the soup kitchens and bulk food distributions for 11,000 needy people in the region.
The coordinator of the Federation Programme in Novy Sad, Hubert Gruber, is full of praise for the effort the Red Cross of Vojvodina (RCV) has made to make the soup kitchens operational this winter: "They have been inventive and creative in reducing the price for food, looking for new sources of support. They are strict in their selection of the most vulnerable. However, they still lack funds to provide the minimum rations for all the people on their lists throughout the winter," he says.
As Daniela returns to her village in the suburbs of Lacarak, the whole family huddles on a mattress on the ground floor and patiently waits as Daniela pours the soup onto a big plate and first feeds her two-year-old brother, who suffers from epilepsy.
The others will eat later, when the plate is passed to them. This routine will continue until April, if the Red Cross manages to collect the funds needed to purchase the food. The Zoritsas are just five of the 7,000 people who have been receiving hot lunches cooked in 19 RCV soup kitchens since October this year. Another 4,000 living in remote villages get a monthly ration of bulk food.
"The preparation of this programme was a valuable experience for us in local fund-raising," says RCV Secretary General Sinjka Somer.
"But in the meantime we are still seeking support from our partners abroad and ask them not to abandon us while we are still on our knees," she told a group of Austrian journalists who are helping to highlight the social problems in Vojvodina and help the Austrian Red Cross to raise funds for food security there over the winter.
Recent vulnerability assessment in Serbia, conducted by Action Contre la Faim this year, put food at the top of "the most urgent short-term needs" for the most vulnerable population. While refugees and internally displaced persons, who make up ten per cent of Vojvodina's population of two million, receive food from the World Food Programme and the ICRC, Roma families, single mothers and single elderly people benefit from the RCV programme.
"I think that the retreat of international aid from Yugoslavia is too early and too quick," says Paul Emens, head of the Federation delegation in Belgrade. "At this transitional stage, when the Red Cross of Yugoslavia try to secure sustainability for social programmes, they will require further support from their partners abroad."
Soup kitchens are not the only way the RCV is trying to ensure food security among the local population. In three districts, the Red Cross undertook longer-term pilot schemes providing the selected families with pregnant livestock.
The aim of this programme, which is funded by the RCV's partners in Canada and the United States, is to secure food for the families or improve their financial situation. Throughout the assessment the selected beneficiaries demonstrated their ability to keep the cattle and pigs and agreed to return calves and piglets to the Red Cross in two years time so that the project can be continued.
Related Links:
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: Appeals, Updates, Stories and Reports