meeting with Filip Vanden Berghe, the guardian angel of the victims

The inhabitants of Chênée (Belgium) are happy, this Thursday, July 14: Filip Vanden Berghe came to visit them. He comes to the village several times a month, with food in his trunk for the flood victims. “It’s friendly. (…) My son hears the van, he runs!”, says a resident. Filip started distributing food to the victims ten days after the disaster, and never stopped. Before each delivery, he makes the rounds of the suppliers, to collect donations: cans, hygiene products and even packets of cakes, and fills his car to the brim.

In one year, he distributed nearly 30 tons of goods. “The big commercial brands really supported me. They very quickly had confidence”, explains Filip Vanden Berghe. After loading, he takes the road to the east of Belgium, 200 m from his home. Each round trip costs him 85 euros in gasoline, and he is already on his 77th delivery. Nothing to cool it down. On each tour he meets hundreds of people, and some have become friends. This is the case of Laëticia Weeghmans, affected, who since the disaster has lived with her husband and children in a caravan at the bottom of the garden. “We know that when he comes, we take a little breath of air”she says.