yunity and FSINT

yunity was an idea born in foodsharing and represents the logical consequence of the train of thought that begins with the wish to save food from being thrown away and ends with the vision of a world where no resources are wasted because all the people communicate freely and treat each other as trustworthy equals.

While setting up foodsharing in Rotterdam Axel Kalitzki noticed that the participating locals soon got the same idea, as they saw the incredible amounts of food being wasted. They connected this experience to their knowledge about the world we live in and came up with questions like "Why don't we also try to save other resources?" And voilà: The vision of yunity was born once again in the same way it came to Raphael Fellmer and Martin Schott years ago, because this is simply the right time for it to be actualized.

Thus, the beauty of foodsharing is that people can directly perceive not only the grave situation of wastefulness our society has created, but also become active in fighting it at the same time, learning that human beings are willing and able to cooperate, even if they seem to be on another side (a.k.a. the one of the big bad capitalists), and even find themselves becoming part of a real life community soon, that can basically live on great free food. Who wouldn't want to participate in something as amazing as that?

FSINT (standing for either foodsharing or foodsaving international, because both aspects are important and need to be realized to have a functional initiative running), the team that formed inside yunity to push the internationalization of the general idea behind German foodsharing.de has mainly been collecting and structuring information so far, to make it accessible to international audiences. From now on we will become even more active: Having experienced that setting up foodsharing initiatives has been quite easy in Copenhagen and Rotterdam, if people who know how to do it are willing to spend some weeks to support local enthusiasts, we decided that it would be best to continue on that path.

At the end of 2016, or the beginning of 2017 the latest, we will go on the road and do exactly what was done in Copenhagen and Rotterdam in other cities as well. By then we will have the lean foodsaving tool, that Tilmann Flo Hoyer and Lars Wolf are working on, to facilitate managing the store pick-ups for groups without German language skills. The community management will take place via facebook (not ideal, but practical). We will contact housing projects or squats to have a place to stay and then work on establishing a working foodsharing initiative with all our energy. There are already a lot of possible starting points available, e.g. the people listed in the foodsharing Mail Evaluation or some of the Existing organizations with similar visions. As soon as we are on site and meet up with local people, we are positive that even more possibilities will arise and contacts will form, so that not a lot of planning is needed beforehand.

The things we think are necessary to take care of before going on the road are the following:

• Create a complete and translated media kit containing template letters, flyers, manuals and a liability waiver.
• Get the foodsaving tool working.
• Do research on the existing (alternative) infrastructure of the target city, to connect as swiftly and deeply as possible with the local scene.
• Establish contact with enthusiastic (potential) foodsavers and find a place to stay.
• Create a facebook group and start PR even before arriving.

Following this plan, upon arrival we will already have a lot of knowledge and contacts and basically just need to get started. People flock to foodsharing on their own and we simply need to manage and empower them for a while, so that they feel confident and responsible enough to keep going after we leave. But we won't leave them alone, of course, we rather want to build a strong network of closely connected initiatives - first in Europe, but in general world-wide. We go out there to activate people who want to contribute to making the world a better place but don't know how and make them part of a global movement for change, which is yunity.

This networking actually is the most important part. We encourage real relationships and bonds and through these connections we prevent waste and raise awareness for a sustainable way of living. Sounds familiar? Well it's our mission! Having a fancy platform will not be enough to change the world, but when we already have a stable network of amazing foodsharing initiatives to support us, then the impact of the software will multiply. During the time a well thought-through scalable yunity platform will take to be developed, we will already start building the groundwork for it to succeed.

And btw, foodsharing is popping up in so many places already, even without our help, that it would simply be a missed opportunity to not go out now and connect the active people to each other and to yunity.

(written by Janina on August 6th 2016)