Migrants and homeless provided with food in Paris

A network of humanitarian activists and volunteers in Paris are preparing and delivering meals for people who are sleeping rough, living in shelters or asylum centres and may find it especially hard to get by during coronavirus outbreak.

Refugee Food Festival is one of several volunteer initiatives across France to bring community members toger and offer food help amid restrictions to public movement imposed during outbreak.

In Paris' 12th district, volunteers turn up on a daily basis to help cook what chef has planned for menu that day.

Thanks to food donations ding to ingredients, initiative can prepare 1,200 rey meals a day, and has so far during outbreak delivered more than 25,000 boxes of food.

Louis Martin, founder of Refugee Food Festival, a culinary and solidarity project supported by UNHCR, has helped put forward culinary skills of former refugees, of which some now work for initiative.

project's three restaurants in Paris h to close during lockdown, but were able to keep kitchens operating to prepare meals.

One of chefs is a former refugee from Mauritania, who said he wanted to help people as a way of returning help that he h received from volunteers on his arrival in France.