Lessons for CED from Europe: Inclusive Communities and a New City-Run Food Pantry

<p>The photo was eerily familiar to anyone interested in CED.  The headline from the New York Times article on September 20, just days before the German national election, read, “Merkel Says Germans ‘Never Had It Better.’ But Many Feel Left Behind.”  The accompanying photo by Gordon Welters, shown here, features the Tafel food bank in Bremerhaven, a port city in northern Germany that is now struggling.   The article described the contradictory economic situation in Germany, where standard economic measures are showing some positive signs while at the same time demand at relatively new community food banks, such as Tafel, is increasing.</p> <p>The situation described in the article resonates with some communities’ experience in their CED development efforts in North Carolina.   North Carolina has seen an increase in poverty as measured by multiple indicators over the past two decades, even in years of economic growth and decreasing unemployment (see Documenting Poverty in North Carolina, 2016).  One of those measures is demand at local food pantries in central and eastern North Carolina, which has seen a ten-fold increase since the mid-1990s.</p> <p>This fall I am working in Belgium as a visiting scholar with the University of Ghent. What lessons does central Belgium hold for North Carolina in terms of CED?  Some innovative discussions on better understanding alignment and contradictions in economic growth and corresponding community development (or lack thereof) are coming from practitioners and researchers in Europe and Canada.   A striking feature of many of the community development approaches here is that policies are framed by the concept of the basic right [...]</p>