Carav’Alim sets the right to food in motion

In France, dignified and sustainable access to food is not a reality shared by all. Committed to the fight for food justice, we support projects that make the right to food effective in a very concrete way. We are thus supporting the Carav’Alim movement, which aims to enable people in food insecurity to contribute to the democratization of the food system.

From food aid to the right to food, a paradigm shift full of promise

Despite numerous aid measures, 8 million people are food insecure in France. Faced with this observation, we have made food democracy and justice a central axis of our action in favor of sustainable food. Convinced that cooperation among all actors is essential to make the right to food a reality, we encourage the experimentation of new ways of doing things which, based on cooperative approaches, imagine other possibilities. Between 2021 and 2023, we supported Territoires à vivreS , which was launched following the Covid crisis, which highlighted the need for citizens to take back control of their food.

Deployed in 4 territories, this dynamic highlighted the need to mobilize with people affected by food insecurity, prompting the initiators of the project to follow up on a national scale. The Carav’Alim movement, which emerged from this experience, aims to set up groups of actors committed to this issue throughout France, in order to “raise the issue of the right to food based on what the people concerned want, think and do,” explains Margaux Denis, head of sustainable food programs at the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation. The initiative so far brings together 7 local groups and 17 member organisations, including local structures and national associations.

A hands-on, collective and mobilizing approach

Claiming to be in popular education, the Carav’Alim movement aspires to ” put the collective back on food issues, reappropriate knowledge, and therefore regain power in our food choices ,” says Maëlis Horellou, its coordinator. A prefiguration phase carried out in 2024 in several territories, including the Toulouse conurbation with the AlimEco association (see interview opposite), has made it possible to identify local actors interested in or already invested in this issue and to better understand their needs. On this basis, the members of Carav’Alim have developed a Manifesto calling for the construction of a true food democracy by integrating citizens and those concerned.

The project developed with this in mind is based on peer-to-peer learning and on the structuring of a collective voice. In 2025, learning visits organised in different territories will allow local actors to boost or strengthen common dynamics, and Carav’Alim members, wherever they come from, to meet, be inspired and network. Affirming its vocation as a “loudspeaker of food injustice”, Carav’Alim will support its members in the formulation of a political discourse on food justice. The 2026 municipal elections will be an opportune moment to make this discourse heard by local decision-makers, before taking it to the next level, in particular with a view to a framework law on the right to food – already called for in the Manifesto for a strong political mobilization for the right to food, published in February 2025 by some sixty organizations, including several partners of the Foundation (Action Against Hunger, Secours catholique-Caritas France, UGESS, etc.).
The Carav’Alim movement corresponds to the Foundation’s ambitions in terms of food democracy. As part of a ” new positive narrative on food “, it brings out ” something that goes in the right direction, positively, by giving a voice, by giving power to act,” says Margaux Denis. It’s mobilizing. »