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The purpose of this paper is to explore both volunteer and ethnographer in a Trussell Trust foodbank in Stockton-on-Tees, North East England during a period of welfare reform and austerity. It shows how ethnographic researchers can develop a more effective qualitative understanding of foodbank use through volunteering.

The methodological design was ethnographic both in terms of data collection and analysis. Volunteering and participant observation began in November 2013 and is ongoing. The data presented are derived from field notes of participant observations.

Tensions are present when considering how best to write up ethnographic research when the researcher adopts a “volunteer ethnographer” role. The negotiation of relationships, practices, and emotions requires the researcher to appreciate the complex and “politicized” discourse surrounding foodbank use in order to report how the foodbank operates in an objective yet truly reflective way.

There is an expanding research interest in the growth of foodbanks. This paper offers unique insights into the value and tensions of adopting the dual role of “volunteer ethnographer” when researching foodbank use in the UK.

In Australia, the Foodbank of Western Australia (Foodbank WA) has a reputation for being at the forefront of health promotion. The purpose of this paper is to describe Foodbank WA's innovative food bank plus approach of incorporating healthy lifestyle initiatives (i.e. nutrition and physical activity education) into its core food bank business, so as to target priority issues such as food insecurity, poor food literacy, overweight, obesity, poor nutrition and physical inactivity.

A case study approach was utilised to explore Foodbank WA's Healthy Food for All® (HFFA) strategy. HFFA is a comprehensive state wide, school and community based strategy, including the School Breakfast Programme, Food Sensations® and Choose to Move initiatives, designed to promote healthy lifestyles to low socioeconomic and vulnerable groups – a major target group of food banks.

Since its inception in 2007, the delivery of food, education and resources has increased across all of Foodbank WA's HFFA initiatives. Evaluation results from feedback surveys demonstrate the success of these interventions to positively impact upon food security, health and wellbeing of participants.

HFFA is a unique, effective and novel strategy that addresses a number of health and nutrition issues. Food banks are well placed to deliver food literacy and healthy lifestyle initiatives. Foodbank WA's holistic approach and demonstrated success provides other food banks with a best practice model and knowledge base for the development of similar health promotion strategies and interventions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of asylum seekers who were entitled to use a foodbank but who had ceased attending the service, to understand why they were not using the charity, and to investigate their food-related experiences.

This study employed a mixed-method approach utilising telephone interviews. Interviews were conducted with 70 asylum seekers in Melbourne, Australia, between September 2015 and February 2016. Interviews explored food-related settlement experiences, food insecurity and experiences of hunger.

Two-thirds of participants were identified as experiencing food insecurity. Despite food and financial insecurity, participants were not using the foodbank as frequently as they were entitled as: the food was not culturally or religiously appropriate to them; asylum seekers with income felt uncomfortable taking food from others who were perceived to be in greater need; or because they were experiencing transport barriers. Participants also experienced a range of physical and mental health concerns.

Ensuring asylum seekers have access to culturally appropriate foods and services is essential. However, given the diversity in foodbank membership, it may not be feasible to provide all of the desired foods at no cost; instead, increased access to culturally appropriate foods may be achieved through a subsidy programme. Novel or alternative approaches to community engagement and food distribution may be needed to increase food security and to decrease hunger in this group.

The purpose of this paper is to present findings from research into food insecurity amongst older people aged 50 years and older in the UK.

This paper uses secondary analysis of national-level survey data and semi-structured interviews with older people receiving emergency food from foodbanks.

There is a forgotten care gap in the UK where a substantial number of older people are living in food insecurity. Many older people live alone and in poverty, and increasing numbers are constrained in their spending on food and are skipping meals. Food insecurity amongst older people can be hidden. Within families a number of older people were trying to ensure that their children and grandchildren had enough to eat, but were reluctant to ask for help themselves.

The broad categorisation of older people aged 50 and above comprises people in very different circumstances. The qualitative component of the research was undertaken across various sites in a single city in England. Despite these limitations, the analysis provides important insights into the experiences of the many older people enduring food insecurity.

An increased public and professional awareness of food insecurity amongst older people is needed. Increased routine screening for under-nutrition risk is a priority. Policy initiatives are needed that are multifaceted and which support older people across a range of age groups, particularly those living alone.

Food insecurity amongst older people in the UK raises questions about the present policy approach and the responsibilities of the government.

The research provides important new insights into the experiences of the many older people experiencing food insecurity in the UK by drawing on survey data and interviews with older people using foodbanks.

We explore how neoliberal logic has led to an erosion of social-welfare programs and pervades organizational structures and functions of a third-sector organization. Based upon fieldwork in a foodbank in the North-West of England, we discuss the impact of economic cuts upon organizational norms of the foodbank, and the intersection with the provision of charity support and personal relationships between the staff, volunteers and visitors.

This article analyses pervasiveness of neoliberalism on a foodbank and the impact this has on organizational norms and relationships found within the organization. It integrates themes of structural violence, neoliberal discourse in the charity sector, notions of (un)deservingness and appropriate of time.

Our research finds how a hostile environment transpires in a third-sector organization under increased economic and bureaucratic pressures and from this, organizational rules emerge that ignore the lived experiences of the people it serves. Herein, visitors must learn the organization's norms and garner relationships to be able to navigate the organization to successfully access essential resources.

The findings in this article will be of interest to academics researching poverty and organizational norms, professionals in the charity-sector and policy makers. Rules originating from economic and bureaucratic pressures can establish barriers to accessing essential material resources. It informs the pressures felt in balancing access to support services with personal timetables, and the need to include visitors' voices in establishing norms.

Over the last 20 years, food banks in Australia have expanded nationwide and are a well-organised “industry” operating as a third tier of the emergency food relief system. The purpose of this paper is to overview the expansion and operation of food banks as an additional self-perpetuating “tier” in the response to hunger.

This paper draws on secondary data sourced from the internet; as well as information provided by Foodbank Australia and Food Bank South Australia (known as Food Bank SA) to outline the history, development and operation of food banks. Food banking is then critically analysed by examining the nature and framing of the social problems and policies that food banking seeks to address. This critique challenges the dominant intellectual paradigm that focuses on solving problems; rather it questions how problem representation may imply certain understandings.

The issue of food banks is framed as one of food re-distribution and feeding hungry people; however, the paper argue that “the problem” underpinning the food bank industry is one of maintaining food system efficiency. Food banks continue as a neo-liberal mechanism to deflect query, debate and structural action on food poverty and hunger. Consequently their existence does little to ameliorate the problem of food poverty.

New approaches and partnerships with stakeholders remain key challenges for food banks to work more effectively to address food poverty.

While the food bank industry remains the dominant solution to food poverty in Australia, debate will be deflected from the underlying structural causes of hunger.

This paper contributes to the limited academic literature and minimal critique of the food bank industry in Australia. It proposes that the rapid expansion of food banks is a salient marker of government and policy failure to address food poverty.

This article draws upon our perspective as academic-practitioners working in the fields of food insecurity, food systems, and inequality to comment, in the early stages of the pandemic and associated lockdown, on the empirical and ethical implications of COVID-19 for socio-economic inequalities in access to food in the UK. The COVID-19 pandemic has sharpened the profound insecurity of large segments of the UK population, an insecurity itself the product of a decade of “austerity” policies. Increased unemployment, reduced hours, and enforced self-isolation for multiple vulnerable groups is likely to lead to an increase in UK food insecurity, exacerbating diet-related health inequalities. The social and economic crisis associated with the pandemic has exposed the fragility of the system of food charity which, at present, is a key response to growing poverty. A vulnerable food system, with just-in-time supply chains, has been challenged by stockpiling. Resultant food supply issues at food banks, alongside rapidly increasing demand and reduced volunteer numbers, has undermined many food charities, especially independent food banks. In the light of this analysis, we make a series of recommendations. We call for an immediate end to the five week wait for Universal Credit and cash grants for low income households. We ask central and local government to recognise that many food aid providers are already at capacity and unable to adopt additional responsibilities. The government's – significant – response to the economic crisis associated with COVID-19 has underscored a key principle: it is the government's responsibility to protect population health, to guarantee household incomes, and to safeguard the economy. Millions of households were in poverty before the pandemic, and millions more will be so unless the government continues to protect household incomes through policy change.

Existing literature affirms that almost half of the young generation has remained unemployed worldwide. On the contrary civic engagement can be a powerful tool in combating this problem. However, the influencing factors that encourage the active participation of young adults yet to be identified. The purpose of this paper is to fill the research gap by creating and validating a research model by including three motives social presence commitment and online offline civic engagement.

The study took a quantitative approach to conduct a cross-sectional study. In total, 214 data were collected from the member of a Facebook group of Bangladesh named Foodbank, a restaurant review page through the online questionnaire. After that structural equation modelling techniques have been used to analyse the data, test the model validity and hypothesis.

The result shows that both commitment and social presence influence offline and online civic engagement. Excitement motives have a higher effect than information and convenience motive. Besides, 8 out of 10 hypotheses have shown significant results, with only the convenience motive not having any positive influence and effect on social presence and commitment.

Almost 47.6 out of 158.5 million are young people who are incapable of contributing fully to national development due to a lack of civic engagement. The outcome of this study will be useful for the Government of Bangladesh, as well as for non-governmental organisations and decision-making authorities to form assessments and develop policy on how to engage the young generation in civic activities to achieve further socio-economic development in the country.

This study contributes to existing literature with newly developed relationships between social presence-civic engagement and commitment-civic engagement. These unique relationships have been empirically tested and resulted insignificant. The study also identifies that it is vital to engage young people more in social works and increase their participation in offline and online activities.

Foodbank use in the UK is rising but, despite high levels of poverty, Pakistani women are less likely to use food banks than white British women. The purpose of this paper is to understand the lived experience of food in the context of poverty amongst Pakistani and white British women in Bradford, including perspectives on food aid.

A total of 16 Pakistani and white British women, recruited through community initiatives, participated in three focus groups (one interview was also held as a consequence of recruitment difficulties). Each group met for two hours aided by a moderator and professional interpreter. The transcripts were analysed thematically using a three-stage process.

Women in low-income households employed dual strategies to reconcile caring responsibilities and financial obligations: the first sought to make ends meet within household income; the second looked to outside sources of support. There was a reported near absence of food insecurity amongst Pakistani women which could be attributed to support from social/familial networks, resource management within the household, and cultural and religious frameworks. A minority of participants and no Pakistani respondents accessed charitable food aid. There were three reasons for the non-use of food aid: it was not required because of resource management strategies within the household and assistance from familial/social networks; it was avoided out of shame; and knowledge about its existence was poor.

This case study is the first examination of varying experiences of food insecurity amongst UK white British and Pakistani women. Whilst the sample size is small, it presents new evidence on perceptions of food insecurity amongst Pakistani households and on why households of varying ethnicities do not use food aid.

In the UK, food poverty has increased in the last 15 years and the food aid supply chain that has emerged to tackle it is now roughly 10 years old. In this time, we have seen the food aid supply chain grow at a rate that has astounded many. Recently that growth has been aided by a grant of £20m from a large supermarket chain. It appears institutionalisation is just around the corner, if not already here. It also appears that there is far greater emphasis on dealing with the symptoms as opposed to solving the root causes of the problem. As an opinion piece, this paper reflects on some of the prevalent issues, and suggests some ways forward.