“It’s great that you can pick up your lunch here and no food is wasted"
The Finnish Red Cross volunteers in Kaarina ensure that the people picking up surplus food from schools get their meals and no food is wasted. In Kaarina, communities where people stay a while to chat have formed around the distributions.
“That’ll do nicely,” says Pertti Nummela from Kaarina while packing food boxes in his backpack.
A food distribution event arranged by the Finnish Red Cross is in progress at the Hovirinta School in Kaarina, Southwest Finland. Nummela’s boxes contain beef stroganoff, potatoes and green salad that were left over from the lunch of primary school students.
“It’s great that you can pick up your lunch here and no food is wasted. It also helps me save a lot of money,” he says.
Nummela’s neighbour Marko Hvitfelt agrees. The two of them like to visit the event. The atmosphere is warm and welcoming and people like to chat in the queue. Hvitfelt feels that school lunches make his diet more varied.
“I’ve become quite lazy to prepare proper meals for myself,” he says.
Food is distributed to everyone
Unserved meals are distributed at the Hovirinta School every weekday. Riitta Vesterinen and Leena Virtanen are volunteers from the Kaarina branch who run the operations smoothly.
The community looks after itself. If one of the volunteers cannot make it, Merja Rapo will leave her place in the queue and offers help. She opens the door to the people in the queue and offers some hand sanitiser.
I found it very hard to get started. Then I thought, why should I be ashamed, this is something that benefits both parties.
Volunteers chat with the customers and check how long the queue is. The idea is to ensure that everyone gets a portion and no food is wasted.
“This requires some degree of optimisation,” says Leena Virtanen.
Food is distributed to everyone. The schools in Kaarina have a sticker indicating that environmentally friendly acts are made there so that everyone can pick up food at a low threshold.
Pertti Nummela has visited these events since last August. An illness, change in employment and divorce have turned his life upside down and made his financial situation difficult. He remembers previously wondering what people were queueing up for at the school.
“I found it very hard to get started. Then I thought, why should I be ashamed, this is something that benefits both parties.”
Growing demand for food aid
Food aid is one of the fastest growing activities of the Red Cross. In Southwest Finland, visits to the food distribution events at schools grew from nearly 50,000 to over 70,000 between 2024 and 2025.
The rising trend is partly due to the fact that new schools have joined, but the statistics also indicate the increase in demand, says Miika Norro from the Southwest Finland district of the Red Cross.
“For example, in Raisio, the number of visits rose from 13,000 to 17,500 in a year even without any new schools joining the programme.”
People of all ages use food aid
People of all ages can be seen in food queues. Some use the service to alleviate their financial situation, some want to have more diverse home-cooked meals, and others look to make their family life easier.
The best feedback we get is when volunteers and customers say that they have made new friends thanks to the system.
Marja-Helena Salmio says that a community where many people know each other has formed around the food distribution events. The events not only provide nutrition but also motivate people to get out: food distribution is a reason for people to leave their homes to see familiar faces.
“The best feedback we get is when volunteers and customers say that they have made new friends thanks to the system,” says Miika Norro.
text: Heidi Pelander
The original, longer version of the article was first published in the Punainen Risti magazine in spring 2026.
