A DREAM TOO BIG? – FEEDING INDIA

Founded in 2014, Feeding India is a not-for-profit organization which aims to solve the problem of hunger, malnutrition and food waste in the country. They channelize extra food from individuals, weddings, restaurants, corporate offices to people who really need it or have no means or access to food. Their belief is that we do not need to create fresh food to feed the less privileged, if we can simply redirect the available extra food to them. Starting with a team of 5 in August 2014, Feeding India now has a network of more than 4500+ volunteers in 43+ cities. In a short span of time, they have served close to 6 million + people. Below, Aakash Kashyap (FABM 2019) shares the journey, being the Core Team Member of the initiative. 

Today, India has the highest number of hungry people in the world. Of the 821 million people hungry globally, nearly 200 million are Indians. That’s almost three times the population of France. As per the Global Hunger Index, India ranks 103rd out of 119 countries with approximately 14.9% of the population being undernourished. Also, 38.4% of children under the age of 5 are stunted.

Hunger compels families to take either take on huge debts that make them struggle for life. or resort to beggary, theft or crime. When a person is hungry, nothing else matters – formal education, respect, equality, justice other fundamentals of the world have no meaning. The reality is that hunger cripples a person in every way.

Despite this glaring hunger, about 67 million tons of food in India is simply wasted in a year, costing more than 92,000 crores, enough to feed an entire state like Bihar. Food is mindlessly tossed into bins at restaurants, colleges, corporate cafeterias, events and adds significantly to our already burdening landfills. It is ironic how both these issues exist simultaneously in a country which could do so much better if it was not burdened by millions needing external aid. If only, there were solutions to address these problems. Feeding India is a not-for-profit organization, working to address these issues. The organization aims to solve the problem of hunger, malnutrition and food waste in the country.

Led by the founder Ankit Kawatra, the organization started 4 years back and it took just 5 members – Ankit Kawatra, Srishti Jain, Sonika, Juhi and Aakash Kashyap to get this project started. Today, Feeding India has become the country’s largest non-profit that is solving hunger and food wastage. Working in 75 cities of the country with more than 20,000 Hunger Heroes, Feeding India has served 25 million meals to people in need. Feeding India channelizes extra nutritious food from individuals, weddings, restaurants, corporate offices to the people who really need it and have no means or access food. They also serve freshly cooked food or raw grains to our partnered shelter homes and beneficiaries. Some key programs include Magic Wheels, a first of its kind program involving a running vehicle that collects and redistributes large food quantities of excess nutritious food especially from functions, cafeterias, events, etc. and serve meals to target beneficiaries while maintaining/ensuring proper quality of the food. Other programs such as Happy Fridge solve food waste at the community level. These fridges are a part of the #FightFoodWaste campaign. They redistribute the food collected from public residences to the people in need. Those in need of the food can take it from the fridge – free of cost. Similarly, people willing to donate food can put the food packets in the fridge after labelling them. Wherever excess food is not enough, Feeding India installs kitchens in non-government schools to serve fresh food and motivates children involved in child labour to come back to school. This program is called Poshan to Paathshala. The organisation even partnered with the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad’s student mess for food collection and is looking forward to expand with other IIMs as well.

Aakash Kashyap (FABM 2019) with the Happy Fridge

Feeding India’s presence is across India, where a Food Donor like restaurants, wedding venues make a donation request through the mobile application or the helpline number. Our volunteers (called Hunger Heroes) collect food in their Food Recovery Vans and distribute them to various nearby Hunger Spots like slum areas, to NGOs, and also at night to people sleeping on roadsides and street corners.

Recently, Feeding India joined hands with Zomato to activate its restaurants into the network and scaling it through the smart use of technology. We see this association as an important step against food.

We have several campaigns going on to tackle hunger in the nation, two of the most recent ones are:

“Meals with Love”

We Indians love to eat as well as feed others. Weddings, events or parties in India mean plenty of food around. In fact, 2.5 crore functions happen in the country every year out of which more than 10 million are weddings. Between 10-15% of food at weddings gets wasted. Our Hunger Heroes collect the food from the wedding venues and distribute it to the nearby Hunger Spots. It takes the cost of one plate of food at a wedding for us to manage the entire operation efficiently.

“This Eid, Share a Meal”

This year, while everyone celebrated Eid with their families, towards the end of Ramadan, the volunteers of Feeding India took the opportunity to make Eid memorable for the less privileged in society. We partnered with India Gate Basmati Rice to celebrate Eid in Bopal and Ahmedabad with the Vimaso Kids Foundation, and in Delhi with children of SPYM shelter home. The event was covered by Radio City, with RJ Aarti in our midst. Everyone present was thrilled to entertain these kids, and delicious Biryani was served. There were smiles everywhere and the kids and their families were really grateful.