There are 93 social canteens in the Republic of Moldova and they annually provide social canteen services for about 16,000 persons. A study conducted by Keystone Moldova revealed a limited national territorial coverage of this type of services. The study authors said the distribution of such services is nonuniform at district level and there are no social canteens in three districts. Most of the social canteens – ten - are located in the municipality of Chisinau.
“By this study, we primarily aimed to assess the coverage of social canteen services at national level. We set the goal of analyzing the normative framework that regulates the operation of social canteen services so as to identify the aspects that need to be improved. The assessment of the beneficiaries’ level of satisfaction and designing of a beneficiary feedback mechanism were also among the goals. We also aimed to assess the ease of access for persons from vulnerable groups so as to formulate recommendations for increasing accessibility,” Ludmila Malcoci, Keystone Moldova executive director, stated in a news conference hosted by IPN.
According to her, the applied methodology was complex and included office analysis of the normative framework, a standardized interview for mapping the services and focus group discussions with representatives of the local public administration, public and private social canteen service providers. There were held profound interviews with representatives of the local and central public authorities and conducted an opinion poll centering on the beneficiaries’ level of satisfaction.
Ana Prasolov, director of the project ”Partnerships for inclusive and resilient social canteen services,” said the social canteen services nationwide have a significantly disproportionate coverage by location, with 2/3 of the social canteens being situated in rural areas and 1/3 in urban areas, at a time when over half of the country’s population lives in villages.
In general, the beneficiaries’ level of satisfaction with social canteen services is high. Nevertheless, the beneficiaries said that the period during which they have access to such services (30 days each quarter, a total of 120 days a year) is limited and their food security is not ensured therefore. 83% of the beneficiaries consider they need social canteen services for longer than a year or permanently. By age categories, 58% of the beneficiaries of such services are older persons and this shows vulnerability in this category is at a high level.
The study was carried out in the framework of the EU-funded project ”Partnerships for inclusive and resilient social canteen services” that is co-funded and implemented by P.I. “Keystone Moldova,” P.A. “Concordia. Social Projects” and P.I.S.M. “Diaconia.”
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