Rostov-on-Don, 4 March 2019 – X5 Retail Group ("X5" or the "Company"), a leading Russian food retailer (LSE and MOEX ticker: FIVE), and the Rus Food Foundation announce the results of this year’s first city-wide Basket of Kindness food marathon. Held on 2 March across 146 Pyaterochka and Perekrestok stores in Rostov-on-Don, the event collected 5 tonnes of food to fill over 1,000 food baskets.
The event was organised and run with the involvement of 200 volunteers from the Rus Food Foundation and approximately 100 employees of X5 stores, who have already started to distribute the food to seniors in need across the Rostov-on-Don region. The food marathon was supported by the regional Ministry of Labour and Social Development and the Consumer Market Department, the Russian Orthodox Church’s Rostov-on-Don Eparchy, associations of student volunteers.
The aid will go to low-income seniors in rural areas of the Azov, Aksaisk, Kamensk, Matveev Kurgan and Taganrog districts and the Novocherkassk and Novoshakhtinsk city districts of the Rostov-on-Don region. X5 Retail Group provided financial support to cover all organisational costs. X5’s stores in the region also provided additional donations of missing items to equalise the food baskets.
In 2018, X5 and the Rus Food Foundation decided to run the Basket of Kindness project in the form of city-wide food marathons. Last year, they brought these events to five major cities: Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Samara, Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod (the latter holding an online marathon). In 2018, the Basket of Kindness encompassed some 1,000 stores across X5 Retail Group’s network to provide 10,000 families in need with 100 tonnes of food. Over 2,000 volunteers were involved last year.