Typically, the “heart restaurant” opens at about six in the morning, by this time its door is already forming. There are many women with children in the small room of the restaurant, they are the first applicants for social assistance. One of the volunteers gives out grocery bags, his colleagues pass in turn, check the names of those who came with lists. Someone has to refuse, for example, to recipients of unemployment benefits, after all, some income. Unfortunately, they are often returned – the terms of payment of benefits are limited. At the beginning of each winter season, lists are updated.
69-year-old Raymonda, a volunteer with 16 years of experience, says that there are not fewer poor, only more. “More and more poverty, single people and incomplete families,” she admits. Visitors to the “heart restaurant” often work, at least half a time, but their profession does not bring enough money. Someone is forced to resort to the help of a restaurant for decades. Someone gets rations, but he himself becomes a volunteer, “to repay the debt” or “support yourself in uniform”. According to the “heart restaurant”, in today’s France, about 8 million people live on the verge of poverty. These are disabled people, old people receiving a “minimum pension”, young people who interrupt from one low -paid temporary work to another and receive a very small salary. Someone unsuccessfully tries to receive political refuge and refugee status: applications can be considered for years, all this time people have no work, no housing, no documents. “Unlike other places, we are not condemned here, we come here not only for food, but for human warmth,” the young woman admits in line.
The restaurant’s grocery package includes the simplest food: canned meat, stew, soluble coffee, pasta, dumplings, carrots, onions – visitors often do not even have money for such inexpensive products. In addition, visitors can get baby food here, those who cannot cook themselves are fed once a day with hot food. Here, the bureau providing assistance in administrative affairs, sometimes you can get tickets to the theater or in the cinema, get a haircut in a small hairdresser.
For 27 years, “heart restaurants” have turned into a large -scale network of charitable organizations: they not only distribute grocery bags, but also organize work search, help schoolchildren from poor families, provide legal and administrative support, and represent temporary housing. Approximately 50% of their budgets are donations, 25% are the funds of the European program to help the poor (established in 1987), 20% – income from charitable fairs, concerts, sales. Only 5% are state funds and benefits. To date, about 60,000 volunteers operate in the French network of “heart restaurants”, they help about 860,000 visitors (data from the official website of the organization).
