The Food Bank in Bladel is under great pressure due to a management crisis, which has led to the resignation of the chairman and eight volunteers. Last Friday they played their last day. What once started as a close-knit team that distributed food parcels to people in need has turned into an organization full of tensions and distrust.
The departure of experienced workers – some of whom had been working there for more than ten years – has major consequences. At one point, everything threatened to go completely wrong, meaning that the food bank on Bredaseweg could no longer open. 46 families dependent on aid were in danger of becoming victims.
“On Fridays, when customers come by for their parcel, there would be no one to help them due to the departure of the volunteers,” says Frank Kleintjens. He has been interim chairman for two weeks. “Fortunately, we were able to solve that with the help of employees from another food bank who are now helping,” he says. “The customers were simply welcome today.”
“At some point it collapsed.”
Kleintjens works in daily life at the Food Bank in Aalst-Waarle. Now he helps out in Bladel. According to him, the breach of trust was caused by a lack of mutual cooperation between the board and volunteers. “My idea is that there has been too much work in groups, each of which has started to lead a life of its own. The danger of working in islands is that people do everything with the best intentions, but you can no longer operate as a whole. There was a lot of dissatisfaction, and at a certain point it collapsed.”
New ideas within the organization were not always well received, according to the interim. As an example, he mentions the new shopping system, where people no longer receive a crate of items, but use a shopping cart to choose which products they take with them. “The transition to this new system took a lot of effort, because not everyone within the team agreed with it. But ultimately, as an organization you have to keep up with the times.”
“We need to start recruiting new volunteers.”
Everything is now being done to get the internal organization back on track and – most importantly – to ensure that the people who depend on the food bank can go there as usual. “We have to recruit new volunteers. We cannot afford to close. Hopefully we will be able to have a full-fledged team in Bladel again in the short term.”
Kleintjens calls working in the food bank a beautiful, noble activity. “In the end, you don’t do it for yourself, but for the people who really need it.”
Mediation
Previously, the Sesame Academy, a foundation that mediates in problems in volunteer organizations, was asked to help with the problems at the Bladel Food Bank. At the beginning of October, an independent discussion leader led a meeting, which revealed that trust between the board and volunteers had been seriously disrupted. There was no resolution of the conflict.