Food Support
Flagship Project

To facilitate extensive cross-sector collaboration for achieving
large scale results

To address poverty issues that are of major public concern and have greater social impact, the SIE Fund Task Force is looking for areas of unmet demands and service gaps where there is a need for greater co-ordination and collaboration to achieve result. In this regard, the Task Force has shown concern for food support service in Hong Kong.

 

Having regard that the food support service sector as a whole is facing challenges, such as lack of information, unmatched supply and demand, as well as high running cost, the Task Force has decided to take on a flagship project which aims at enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of the overall food support service in Hong Kong.


Intermediary

To design, set up and operate
an inclusive platform

The SIE Fund engaged St. James' Settlement (SJS) as the intermediary in 2016 to launch its first flagship project in capacity building to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of food support services in Hong Kong. SJS is responsible for designing, building and operating an inclusive platform for different stakeholders of the sector, including food donors and food support service operators, to coordinate information sharing on the demand and supply of food items and related services..

  • Josephine Lee, CEO of St. James' Settlement, shares their experience working with SIE Fund as the intermediary for the Food Support Flagship Project:

Journey of the First Phase

Collaborative platform to enhance
the overall efficiency and effectiveness
of the sector

During the first year of intermediary engagement, SJS has commissioned a territory-wide study to better understand the whole food support service sector. (click here for the executive summary of the baseline study)

FOOD-CO is the first all-round collaborative platform in Hong Kong to connect food support service operators, corporate food donors and volunteers by making use of information technology and data analysis. FOOD-CO first went on trial in Kwai Tsing, Kwun Tong and Yuen Long in May 2017 (click here for related press release). SJS has commissioned a social impact assessment for the pilot run of FOOD-CO to understand and analyse the impact of FOOD-CO during the six-month pilot run. The result shows that the target outcome indicators are all overachieved in the three pilot districts (more details can be found in the executive summary of the social impact assessment for pilot run of FOOD-CO and the press release). Since November 2017, FOOD-CO has expanded to cover all 18 districts across Hong Kong.

Operators can share the best practices and better coordinate their operations through this platform. Donors can also reach out to suitable operators for more efficient food donations. Members of the public and people in need can better understand different food support services in their own districts. Public awareness programmes are also held to let people know more about food support services in Hong Kong.


FOOD-CO 2.0

To further enhance the capacity
of the sector and encourage
food surplus donation

The first phase of FOOD-CO was completed in May 2019 with significant results. With additional funding from the SIE Fund, SJS launched the second phase of the project “FOOD-CO 2.0” in July 2019 to further enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the food support service sector, as well as step up advocacy for donation of food surplus. In FOOD-CO 2.0, an automated one-stop logistics system comprising food delivery and temporary storage services will be established to support the operation of food support service operators and their service expansion. It will also cover recruitment and provision of training to potential volunteers to assist the delivery of food support service by small- and medium-sized operators. Besides, an artificial intelligence chat robot (Chatbot) will be introduced to facilitate the donation process in order to encourage more individuals and corporates to donate surplus food, thus enabling more needy people to receive food assistance with the FOOD-CO.

For more details, please refer to FOOD-CO website.