Greenland’s emerging social conscience – Voluntary food delivery to people experiencing homelessness in Nuuk

The COVID-19 lock-down revealed real neglect in social policies

Often during times of crisis, shortfalls in social policy become more visible, which is the case in Nuuk with a nonexistent focus on social marginalization. During Nuuk’s shutdown, the public administration failed to make an emergency relief plan for people dependent on public services for food and everyday care. The closure meant a closing of social services and, thereby, social work. Essentially, the shutdown meant that many already marginalized people, experienced food insecurity and the risk of infection and spreading the virus. Year-round the local NGO NoINI (meaning No Room), run by a few volunteers, facilitates a weekly soup kitchen by borrowing the kitchen in the local Salvation Army, and through funding by the Greenlandic Red Cross. Recently, NoINI stated that they had the food capacity to provide warm meals every evening if only it were possible to recruit more voluntary help. During the Christmas season, it seems that the wider community is more benevolent as more private citizens are eager to help people in need. However, once Christmas is over, the benevolence seems to disappear as the extra hands hang up their kitchen gloves (appears to be a common trend in Greenland). During the current COVID-19 crisis, NoINI did not expect any additional voluntary help.

A week welfare system showed a strong NGO food supply deployment

With the Nuuk lockdown and the closure of all shops and public services, action and emergency planning were requisite (we only observed these from the authorities very late in the process). Eventually, the NGO’s realized that a public relief plan was not forthcoming. Although the municipality established a temporary tent camp (polar tents that can withstand arctic temperatures of −15° C). to house some of the people experiencing homelessness, they failed to deliver food and the much-needed emergency health plans.

Thus, the NGOs had to mobilize rapidly. While NoINI continued to serve warm meals every Wednesday, a solution for the rest of the week was required. By reaching out, NoINI quickly received an offer of volunteer and financial help from the Greenlandic Red Cross. Moreover, local restaurants volunteered to donate hot meals. NoINI established teams of three who received the donated food, re-packed it in takeaway boxes, and distributed it to those in need through an open window every day for five weeks. In total, eighteen people volunteered to help NoINI with the food distribution program. Normally NoINI expedites around 40 servings during the weekly soup kitchen. During the 5 weeks of lockdown, the volunteers distributed between sixty to ninety meals pr. day. We assumed that the rest received help from their families, network or through other means.

The food distribution initiative demonstrated the Greenlandic society’s social conscience. It was powerful and showed signs of real social responsibility. Uniquely, the volunteers who came forward were atypical and new to the voluntary sector in Nuuk. It was informal social work that surpassed the public sector. The initiative illustrated Eric Olin Wright’s three approaches to working alongside the public system where one can: a) smash the system b) work with the system, or c) ignore the system (Wright, 2010). Ignoring the public system wasn’t the intention. NoINI much needed to work with the system but where never able to enter a constructive dialog. With the shutdown public employees became difficult to reach and therefore even harder to work with in order to resolve the critical social situation of food delivery. During the COVID-19 lockdown, the public system was unapproachable, and this is in a country that subscribes to the Scandinavian welfare model.

The social fabric of society in Greenland is usually glued together by a resolute community attitude where the public takes a stand to deal with social issues. This attitude has been observed in other crises in Greenland, such as children in need, violence against women, or the plight of the growing elderly population. The aforementioned groups are viewed as the classic representatives of the ‘deserving and the undeserving’ – a classical distinction that became apparent during the 1800 Poor Laws of Europe. This notion of the ‘deserving and the undeserving’ still lingers in Greenlandic Social policies. While there are publicly funded advocacy groups/ombudsmen that represent the elderly, disabled, and children, there are no government-funded organizations that represent marginalized non-disabled adults and people experiencing homelessness. As in many other societies these groups are stigmatized as lazy and responsible for their own situations (Greenlandic Red Cross, 2018).

Closely linked to homelessness are children and young people who have been in the foster care system, which numerous studies have shown (Noblet, 2017; Rome and Raskin, 2017; Sample and Ferguson, 2019). Research shows that because of high rent and house prices that many young adults leave ‘care’ and are at high risk of ending up in homelessness. The latter highlights one of the paradoxes in the modern welfare society. On the one hand, older children in the ‘childcare system’ are viewed as victims of their circumstances. While on the other hand, young adults leaving the same ‘care’ system become stigmatized as ‘undeserving’ and responsible for their situation. When considering the majority stigmatizing public attitude towards non-disabled marginalized adults, it is not surprising that it is not an area that is prioritized by the government.

While the COVID-19 crisis witnessed some public benevolence in Nuuk, over the last few decades, Greenland has experienced an increasing gap in inequality between rich and poor. We are observing more significant concentrations of marginalized people in larger cities because of urbanization tendencies and the labor market that favors the middle and upper classes while excluding low-income groups and the poor.

These classic 'push and pull' factors of the industrial era are showing a new pulse together with a more liberalized housing market that caters to the middle and upper classes of society.

The public sector is currently not up to the task of providing for and protecting marginalized adults in society at the best of times, never mind during a crisis. Thus, the NGO’s are forced to take more social responsibility, which in the case presented in this essay involved classical social planning around food distribution to the marginalized citizens in society.

The second paradox illustrated by this essay is that Greenland may be close to being one of the biggest states pr. capita in the world (public budget/pr. inhabitants’ public workforce). In that respect, Greenland has the option of focusing on every citizens’ right to life in social security. Instead, the large public state has settled with caring for middle and upper-income families. The latter is in harmony with Le Grand (1982), who illustrates how welfare benefits mostly benefit middle to upper-middle-class families (Le Grand, 1982).

Rounding up

A welfare society is measured by how it treats the vulnerable in society. The NGO’s learned how to be more critical of the lack of political initiatives and demand actions plans in emergencies. Perhaps what we witnessed during COVID-19 where the limits of the welfare system in times of crises.

It was lucky that nobody got infected and suffered needlessly. One thing is the neglect by the political system; another is the clear sign of disapproval of this by the civil society. There is a sign of hope and a willingness to act and secure welfare in times of crisis. The first clear learning experience from this crisis was the need to redefine the term universal welfare, which was not fitting. The second experience is that social work comes in many shapes and forms. What we saw was voluntary social work, that might at some point inform the professional social workers and politicians of gaps in the social services. The final and perhaps more important learning experience was an illustration of what takes place when the political and administrative system are too slow to react in times of crisis, then a civil society i.e. the NGO’s were quick to step up and fill the void.

The NGO’s will eventually need to report back and inform the public system to ensure better social emergency response in the future.