The information below is the result of evaluating the mails received by international@lebensmittelretten.de over the past two and a half years (since the end of 2013). If you are interested to contact people listed here, just comment on this page or ask us via mail and we will establish the contact! (Due to data protection reasons we decided not to publish all the email addresses on here, sorry for the inconvenience.)

This is not a list of existing foodsharing initiatives, but really just the mail evaluation! There is, for example, a successful community in Copenhagen now, which is not mentioned here, because it was not mentioned in the mail from Copenhagen. There will, however, be a list of existing groups and starting communities soon, so stay tuned! Until then the best spot to gather info on people who are getting active to save and share food around the globe probably is our dedicated channel #fs-international on Slack! (Click here to self-invite you into the yunity Slack!)

Enthusiastic people who wrote to foodsharing.de

This table is ordered chronologically, so the newest mails are summarized at the bottom!

(Small deviations from the chronological order are due to mails being forwarded.)

New contacts:

...to be continued!

Quotes containing additional info or specific questions and problems

140308 - Anita from Zagreb CR
'Therefore I was wondering if you could give me few tips on how to start - do I need a NGO, employees, what would be the first step, what are minimum requirements...? Guess one of the steps is translation of the web page? Who is admin of the page? How does the food exchange begin?'

140822 - Renée from St. Andrews UK
'Wir stecken noch in der Aufbauphase des Projekts und sind deswegen sehr flexibel. Vielleicht könnte ein Repräsentant von euch sogar im Laufe des nächsten Jahres einen Workshop oder Vortrag für unsere freiwilligen Helfer geben. Eure Erfahrung würde uns sicher sehr helfen.'

Translation: We are in the initial stages of our project and therefore are very flexible. Maybe over the course of next year you could sent a representative to us, who could hold a workshop or a lecture for our volunteers. Your experience would surely be beneficial to us.

140921 FoodNotBombs Istanbul TR
'We are doing cooking actions every Wednesday regularly, plus on some other occasions like demonstrations, occupations etc.
We are a natural member of Foodsharing, but not an organic member of it.'

141127 Eleanor from Herefordshire UK
'I am trying to develop a food sharing site to function in the UK, beginning in my local Herefordshire, and would love to have some mentoring or advice from the experts! I've recently graduated from university, and am doing the project with the support of Herefordshire New Leaf, a non-for-profit organisation dedicated to supporting and promoting sustainability in Herefordshire. I was inspired by UK projects such as FoodCycle, the Real Junk Food Project and FareShare, and an analysis of need in Herefordshire suggests a communication device would be of use. I was delighted to see that this is already happening in Germany!
The site would work similarly to foodsharing.de - like a dating website for food - and would also provide a calendar of need of local food banks and hot food providers.
- The website will be able to accept inputs from registered suppliers, possibly with the option for use of a mobile application.
- Potential recipients will have a profile, detailing their location and needs.
- Registered potential recipients will be notified via email if/when posts corresponding to their necessities are advertised. These will also feature on the site homepage and a summary will be posted to twitter.
- The site will email all potential recipients from the site based on the proximity of the recipient to the supplier.
- The potential recipient can then respond to the offer to confirm interest and arrange pick up in the time scale appropriate to the supplier.
- There can be an option to contact the PediCargo bike service for Hereford-based transport.
- A target launch for March
I wonder if there is anyone who I can be in contact with about your expansion plan/outreach?'

141126 Jane from San Francisco US
'A group of friends and I read the article about you in the New York Times. We think this is a brilliant idea, and have in a matter of hours pulled together legal experts, donors and a few volunteers. We’d like to duplicate your program in San Francisco. While we have to work within the laws of San Francisco and California, we thought it might be helpful to learn from your organisation. You’ve already done this, so you must have some tips or guidance for getting started.'

150220 Adam from Hungary
'Vor einigen Monaten habe ich mit einem Freund begonnen an einer Webseite zu arbeiten, die sehr ähnlich zu foodsharing.de ist: Eine kartenbasierte, ökologische Seite gegen die Verschwendung von Nahrungsmitteln. In Ungarn gibt es einen großen Bedarf dafür und wir sind bereits mit vielen Leuten in Kontakt, die uns unterstützen wollen.
Die größte Schwierigkeit für uns ist es derzeit, die Webseite aufzubauen. Wir haben einen Entwickler gefunden, der uns eine Seite mit OpenStreetMap bauen möchte, aber ihm fehlt die Zeit das ganze von null ab aufzubauen.'

Translation: Some months ago together with a friend i started working on a website very similar to foodsharing.de: A location-based, ecological page against food waste. There is a big need for this and we are already in contact with a lot of people who'd like to support us. The biggest difficulty for us is to further build the website. We found a developer who wants to build one using OpenStreetMap, but he lacks the time to do this from scratch.

150306 Myriam from France
'* What financial budget do I have to provide in total, to start with?-Who pay for the electricity as well?
*What are the highlights and the weaknesses, limits of this kind of association?'

150311 Michaela from New Zealand
'Would you be able to help me with some information on what you had to do to set up the project? How long did it take and what did you have to do? '

150330 Philippe from Paris FR
'we want to develop the same thing in Paris. We are a couple of motivated friends ready to be Food Sharing volunteers in our region. As you are in charge of the internationalization, we wanted to know:
1. If other people French/Paris already contacted you and if there is already few stuff set up in Paris area so that we can join the movement.
2. If not, we would appreciate if you could share your experience so that we know the best way to proceed and the key elements we need to focus on. '

150414 Nina from Istanbul TR
'Derzeit bin ich für einige Monate in Istanbul, wo regelmäßig food not bombs stattfindet. Food not Bombs ist eine internationale Bewegung, die als Ziel hat gerettete Lebensmittel für Menschen verfügbar zu machen. (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Not_Bombs)
Food not bombs gibt es seit einem Jahr in Istanbul und hat das Bewusstsein für Lebensmittelverschwendung hier merkbar erhöht. Dies ist die Facebookseite von FnB Istanbul: https://www.facebook.com/sofralar?fref=ts
Zudem gibt es hier eine große Freegan-Bewegung, viele Menschen holen Essen bei Restaurants, in Supermärkten und Märkten ab. Die Resonanz ist hier äußerst positiv, in den meisten Fällen geben die Menschen sehr gerne Lebensmittel, die sie sonst wegwerfen würden. Trotzdessen wird immernoch täglich viel Essen in den Müll geworfen. Einerseits sind viele Menschen noch nicht mit dem Problem des Überangebots in Berührung gekommen und andererseits fehlt ein System, wie das Abholen und die Distribution der geretteten Lebensmittel organisiert werden könnte. Das Potenzial etwas zu verändern, zu bewegen, ist sehr hoch. Es gibt viele engagierte Menschen und gute Bedinungen, um auch hier das Konzept von foodsharing einzuführen.'

Translation: I am at Istanbul at the moment, where Food not Bombs takes place regularly. Food not Bombs is an international movement, that pursues the goal to make food accessible to people. In Istanbul it exists since a year and considerably raised the awareness for food waste. This is their facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/sofralar?fref=ts On top of that there is a big freegan movement here and a lot of people pick up food at restaurants, supermarkets and farmers markets. It all is very positive and for the most part the vendors are happy to be able to donate food that otherwise would have been thrown away. Still, there is a lot of food that gets wasted every day. On the one hand because many people still don't know about the problems of excessive supply and on the other hand we lack a system to manage the pick-ups and helps distributing the saved food. The potential for change is extraordinary and there are many people and great conditions to implement foodsharing here as well.

150411 Jiří from Brno CZ
'Wir, eine Gruppe von jungen Studenten aus Brno in Tschechien, sind von eurer Idee des Foodsharings begeistert. Unser erklärtes Ziel ist es nun, es eurem Konzept nachzutun und das Projekt in unserer Stadt umzusetzen. Die erste Frage, die sich uns stellt ist, ob wir mit euch unter eurem Namen kooperieren würden oder ob wir von Anfang an ein eigenes Projekt starten würden. Sollte Letzteres der Fall sein, so stellen wir uns die Frage, ob es die Möglichkeit gäbe Hilfe von euch bezüglich des Aufbaus der Website zu bekommen.'

Translation: We are a group of young students from Brno, Czech Republic and we are enthusiastic about your idea of foodsharing. We really want to copy your concept and rebuild it in our city. The first question that comes to mind is if we can cooperate with you and use your name or if we start our own project from the very beginning. If it was to be the latter, we'd like to know if you could provide some help for creating a website like yours.

150427 Guilia from Genova IT
'Do you think it could be possible to recreate an internet platform for the food-colletcion similar to yours for Italy? Or maybe, Could we be hosted by your site and just add the italian cities that will apply in the future? Do you know of others italian that contact you for this project already? If yes please give us their contact so we can talk to them about all the igienic and burocratic issues that stops most of the supermarket to give all the food waste. We would like to know more about how you manage to create agreements with supermarket and the big industy of food. How did you manage with the igenic topic?'

150420 Guiliana from Brussels BE
'we were wondering if the Foodsharing platform would be interested in “sharing” their web site with us. What I mean by this is weather it would be possible to centralize the information on your website by creating a Belgium template (in French and Dutch ). By doing so we would avoid the useless multiplication of web sites and initiatives, which are in fact tackling the same issues. Of course we would remunerate this service so to support your platform, if you would agree to our request we would like to know the amount that you consider as a fair remuneration.'

150511 Kumar from Lisbon PT
'I'm an Italian guy, living in Lisbon - Portugal , I'd like to develop your idea here . I don't speak German so I don't understand at all how your association works ? I think the first step is contact the Shop or supermarket ' Manager and ask if they want collaborate in a project like this, is that right? Right now I'm a volunteer in a cooperative call Fruta Feia , that recovers the fruit can not be sold to the market directly from the producers and creates the baskets with mixed products which they sell directly to citizens associated.'

150520 Yvonne from Hallbartuni Sweden (second mail)
'bei uns ist gerade große umbruchstimmung kurz vor dem ende des semesters (hier ist leider doch jedes semester ne große fluktuation). erfolg beim ansprechen der bäckereien/läden hatten wir nun aber doch. mit mutterschprachlerin geht das doch schon etwas einfacher =) Leider ist hier die rechtliche lage doch ziemlich anders und wir brauchen so ne andere organisation, die schon ein
lebensmittelsicherheits-zertifikat (oder so was) hat, damit wir rechtlich abholen können. aber es passiert viel. wenn auch schritt für schritt...'

Translation: We are feeling change again, now at the end of the semester (sadly, there always is huge fluctuation every semester), but we had success contacting stores and bakeries. It is much easier with native speakers =). Unfortunately the legal situation here is a lot different and we need another kind of organization, that already has a food safety certificate (or something like that), for us to be legally allowed to do pick-ups. But a lot is happening, even though in small steps...

150608 Stefan from Poland
'Would you share the site engine so that I can copy it and translate it to Polish?'

150701 Lucrezia from Milan IT
'I would like to know whether there is something similar to the foodsharing project already going on in Italy, in particular I was interested in the part of the project which put in contact shop/market to people who go an pick up the product shops would throw away (I just saw Pif documentary about your initiative).'

150712 Laura from Belgium
'how did you start the project, what kind of people did you involved,etc'

150801 Ursula from Brazil
'I live in Brazil and as long as I can see there are only very poor people collecting rests of food in the rubish baskets..I couldn't see possibilities to watch the rubish of markets and supermarkets..they are all save behind the walls, probably because of the possible invasion of poverty. And people are very vain here. I don't imagine the reaction of market owners if I asked them too disponibilize the rests of good food to population..'

150730 Alena from South Tyrol
'ich schreibe aus Italien, genauer gesagt aus der Autonomen Provinz Bozen - Südtirol, Amt für Kinder- und Jugendschutz und soziale Inklusion.
Ich würde gerne informell einige Informationen über die Initiative foodsharing haben. Bei uns ist eine Anfrage eigegangen auch in Südtirol ein Pilot-Projekt mit einem Fairteiler zu starten, daher bin ich gerade dabei Informationen hierzu einzuholen. Speziell interessiert mich wie die Initiative in Österreich gestartet ist und außerdem ob sie in Deutschland und/oder Österreich Hilfe bzw. Unterstützung von öffentlichen Einrichtungen/Institutionen bekommt und wenn ja, wie diese aussieht.'

Translation: I am writing from Italy, or more precisely from the independent prvince of Bozen in South Tyrol - bureau for youth protection and social inclusion. I would very much like to gather some information about the foodsharing initiative inofficially. We received an inquiry towards a pilot project in South Tyrol that would run a Fair-Share Point. I am most interested in how the initiative started in Austria and if it received help or support from public institutions in Germany or Austria and if yes, what kind of support was received.

150806 Simon from Germany (then in Netherlands, now in Beijing)
'Gibt es in den Niederlanden schon eine uebergreifende Organisation der Foodsharing Gruppen (Die einzigen, die ich gefunden habe waren in Groningen und Wageningen) oder zumindest Ansprechpartner mit denen ich mich kurzschliessen kann?'

Translation: Is there already an organization connecting the different foodsharing communities in the Netherlands (i know of groups in Groningen and Wageningen) or at least someone to contact about this?

150725 Tilman from Germany (temporarily in Sweden)
'1. Existierendes Präsentationsmaterial, was ist foodsharing? Wie funktioniert es ?
2. Eventuell eine Flyervorlage um diese in entspr. Einrichtungen auszulegen ?
3. Bei Fragen zur Verfügung stehen, eventuell auch mal im Gespräch über z.B. Skype oder ähnliches
Sollte das hier alles einen erfolgreichen Verlauf nehmen und eine gewisse Professionalität erreichen wären weitere Schritte wie die Internationalisierung oder Kopie der foodsharing Seite auf eine schwedische Domain interessant. Aber das ist sehr weit gedacht.'

Translation: The things i'd like to ask from you are: 1. Existing material about what foodsharing is and how it works. 2. Flyer templates 3. People to be there in case of problems, for Skype or the likes. If all of our endeavours play out nicely and we reach a certain degree of professionalism, further steps like internationalization or a copy of the foodsharing website on a Swedish server would be interesting. But this is in the far future.

150821 Karli from Cleveland
'Right now my biggest concern is legal issues. If someone obtained and ate food that was spoiled and tried to sue you, what would happen? Do you have legal responsibility for the health of the person who eats the spoiled food?
Additionally, how do you get the word out about food sharing? What is the most successful way of getting grocery stores and supermarkets to participate?'

151006 Iulia from Italy
'Ich suche hier eine ahnliche Organisation oder ein Weg um sie zu grunden wenn Moglich, deswegen frage ich euch ob ihr so was hier kennt und in Kontakt damit seid oder ob ich irgendwie so was anfangen kann, vielleicht mit ein Oko village oder so welche Gruppen, und ihr mir ein Rat geben konnten. Ich meine, wie man die Supermarkten z.B uberreden kann? Wurde es Moglich sein die gleiche website zu benutzen (foodsharing.de) und eine gemeinsame Website zu haben, zu mindestens am Anfang, bis die ganze Sache anfangt?'

Translation: I am looking for a similar organization or a way of founding one if possible. That's why i'm asking you if you know any projects or people and can connect me to them or if i can simply start an initiative like yours. Maybe an ecovillage or such groups could give me advice. How can i convince stores to participate? Would it be possible to use your website (foodsharing.de) to have a common one? At least in the beginning, until all of this starts to grow?

151128 Paul from Germany in Sweden
'Ich studiere momentan in Lund in Schweden und würde als Mitglied der Studentenvertretung gerne einen Verteiler aufstellen. Das dürfte eigentlich von den Geräten auch fast kein Problem sein, weil jede Fachrichtung eigene Kühlschränke hat für die Lunchboxen. Die werden aber momentan kaum genutzt, sodass ich dachte, dass dies doch vielleicht eine Möglichkeit wäre sie als Fairteiler zu nutzen. Weiß jemand von euch Bescheid, wie das rechtlich aussieht? Ist das in Schweden überhaupt erlaubt?'
151207 same
'Ich habe mich mal ein bisschen schlau gemacht und einige Leute auf Facebook gefragt was sie von der Idee foodsharing halten. Folgendes ist herausgekommen: wir haben einen potentiellen Spender für einen Fairteiler, die Universität, bzw. das Office für die Koordination von Nachhaltigkeitsprojekten der Universität unterstützt es unter anderem auch mit einer Juristin und es gibt sogar eine Arbeitsgruppe von der Umweltvereinigung der Studenten zum Thema foodsharing. Inklusive Haftungsausschluss. Sie gehören zwar nicht offiziell zu euch, aber ich glaube man kann sagen, dass eure Idee bereits in Schweden angekommen ist.'

Translation: I am studying in Lund and would like to install a Fair-Share Point. I am part of the students council and fridges are already present, because almost every field of study has their own fridges for lunchboxes and those are not used very much at the moment. So i am thinking of using them as Fair-Share Points. Does anyone of you know how the legal sitiuation is in this scenario? Is it even possible in Sweden?'

Translation II: I did some research and asked some people on facebook what they think about the idea of foodsharing. This came out of it: We have a potential donator for our Fair-Share Point, the university supports us with a lawyer and there even is a group in the environmental community of the students, that works about the topic of foodsharing. They even have a waiver. Officially they are not part of foodsharing, but i'd say that the idea already arrived in Sweden.

151228 Hugo & Nathalie from Toulouse FR
'Do you have some advices that could help us to make it [FSP] work : launching, installation, organization, etc...? For example, i'd like to know if you asked the city council to install fridges on the street. How do you get electricity for your fridges in the street ?
We are now looking for a second hand fridge and a good location to install it. We are thinking that we could install our first fridge on a self-managed place with a important people flow. We'd like to put some others in the street but we are wondering how we could get electricity acess.
I'm running a food-truck so i know we could have some food to initiate the action.
We will try to celebrate the fridge opening by inviting the more neighbours we can so they can spread the word around them.'

160317 Adrien from Tours, France
'- Wie lange haben Sie gebraucht um das Projekt durchzuführen?
- Was waren die wichtige Etapen? In welcher Reihenfolge wurde dieses Projekt durchgeführt?
- Wie viel Leute waren nötig für die Projektsrealisierung?
- Wie viel Geld haben Sie für die Projektsausführung ausgegeben?
- Insgesamt wie viel und welche Geldausgaben bezüglich dieses „Food Sharing“ Projekts haben Sie gemacht?
- Sind Sie ein Verein oder eine Vereinigung grundsätzlich?
- Arbeiten Sie mit Vereinigungen zusammen? Wenn ja, welche Vereinigungen betroffen sind?
- Wo und wie haben Sie die Kühlschränke gefunden?
- Wie haben Sie die Orten wo die Kühlschränke gestellt worden sind gefunden?
- Was waren Ihre Auswahlkriterien?
- Wie viel Külhschränke funktionieren noch heute?
- Wie haben Sie geschafft, mit Ihrem Projekt grossen Anklang bei den Leuten zu finden ?
- Welche Projektpartnern haben Sie ? (Rathaüser, Stadts- oder Landsverwaltung, andere Geschäfte wie z.B Lebensmittelgeschäfte oder andere?)
- Haben Sie für dieses Projekt geworben? ( Fersehwerbung, Radiowerbung, Online-Werbung?)
- Gibt es ein Pfand für die Kühlschränke? (das so ähnlich als das Bierflaschepfand würde?)
- Wer benutzt am meisten diese Kühlschränke?
- Werden diese Külhschränke zerstört? ( Vandalismusakte verursacht?)
- Welche Personen kümmern sich um den guten Lauf der Kühlschränken? Wie oft?
- (Wie oft pro Tag, pro Woche, pro Monat?)
- Welche Beschränkungen oder Zwänge haben Sie getroffen? (bezüglich der Sicherheit und der Hygiene, usw.)
- Welche Pflichtsgenehmigungen waren nötig? 
- Welches Organismus oder Behörde hat Ihnen diese Genehmigungen oder Erlaubnisse erteilt?
- Stellen die Leute regelmässig Lebensmittel in den Kühlschränken?
- Was waren für Sie die grössten Schwierigkeiten oder Hindernisse dieser Projektausführung? Wie haben Sie es überwunden?'

Translation: How long did it take you to create the project? What were important steps? In what order did you build the project? How many people did you need to realize it? How much money did it cost? How much money did you spend and on what? Are you an association or a union? Do you work together with unions and if yes with which? Where and how did you find the fridges? How did you find the spots to set up your fridges? What were your criteria? How many of those fridges do still work? How did you manage that people like your project? What partners do you have? Did you advertise your project? Is there any form of deposit for the fridges? Who uses the fridges the most? Do the fridges get vandalized? Who takes care of the fridges and how often? What restrictions and obligations did you set in place for hygiene and safety? Which approvals and permissions did you need from the authorities? Which offices wre you in contact with? Do people regularly place food in the fridge? What were the major difficulties and impediments for your project and how did you overcome them?

160504 Alexandra from New York, USA
'I recently saw a video that featured your organization, showing restaurants having a refrigerator outside of the building, where they put leftover food from that day, for people who are food insecure (not knowing where their next meal will come from). I would love any and all insight as to how to start this endeavor, how it is funded, a sample business model, how employees get paid, where the refrigerators are located (close to the building, one a block, attached to the store front...etc?), who cleans them, how to get restaurants interested...anything you can provide will be much appreciated.'