Community Empowerment through Establishment of a Local Food Supply Chain

Abstract

The socio-economic crisis and its consequences in the “Post-austerity” era in Greece have increased the number of homeless and unemployed people (ATHENS RESILIENCE STRATEGY 2017: p. 12). The increasing number of vulnerable people in Athens are not capable of providing healthy food and require social support to adapt to the new living conditions. This study project seeks to cope with the economic crisis and the challenges that threaten the most vulnerable groups of the society by improving their socio-economic resilience via creating and promoting an alternative self-sustaining local food supply chain. Exarcheia neighborhood in the inner city of Athens is chosen as the case study of this project. This study suggests a network of activities and places in Exarcheia neighborhood, in which urban gardens and farms are built and farmer’s markets and collective kitchens are organized. This network of places and people are supposed be managed by grass-roots initiatives with a special focus on empowering and supporting vulnerable groups of people in Exarcheia. The effect of such local food supply chain is reducing the expenses of food production and supply by omitting the middlemen, gaining affordable and healthy food and increasing the social capital in the neighborhood by boosting the interaction of different groups of inhabitants in the neighborhood and finally improving the quality of life of the inhabitants.