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 the coronavirus outbreak.

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

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

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

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

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

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