During my recent visit to Chennai, I came across the token concept in a restaurant, where donating Rs 30 equals donating a meal to the needy. Intrigued by the great initiative, I inquired the hotel owner only to be surprised when he told me that a 23-year-old woman was behind this idea. Sneha Mohandas is a Viscom graduate from Chennai and has established ‘The Food Bank’ to feed the needy.
The drive to feed the hungry was imbibed deep inside Sneha from her childhood by her grandparents wherein they used to do the same. She initially started off by donating food to the people in a local temple on every Thursday. With the motto that no single person goes hungry in the nation, Sneha decided to start charity at her hometown, Chennai. The concept of Food Bank is quite simple: Alongside cooking food for their families, the members of this group also cook extra food for the poor. Then Sneha is informed through Facebook or Whatsapp when the food is already packed and ready for distribution. Sneha sends her volunteers to collect the food packets and distributes them to the street dwellers in different areas..
What makes the Food Book stand out than any other food donation program is that, Sneha and her volunteers do not just give out food packets from hotels, or leftovers from their homes, but provide the poor with warm home-cooked food. Sneha strongly believes that when one is ready to help others, he/she should do it in the best way possible and hence provides the weak and poor with home-cooked healthy food and not just any food.
“As a policy, the organization does not accept leftover food and instead asks people to cook extra for two people so that fresh food can be given to people who need it. We insist for fresh cooked food since everyone is equal when it comes to eating and we are happy that the response so far is good,” said Anandh SG, a member of the organization.
Food Bank was initially started as a Facebook group with her close friends and relatives and soon went on to have 2895 members from all over Chennai. Gradually, the group saw a surge in the number of members and orders were coming in from different areas. Sneha then created Whatsapp groups for each area for the sake of convenience. She now has volunteers in T-Nagar, Nungambakkam, Adyar, Perambur, Kilapuk, Ashoknagar, Saidapet, West Mabalam and Chetpet who go around collecting food from their respective areas.
“ I started the group on Facebook because most of the people spend their time there and many of them might be interested in this but they just need a connecting point,” she said.
They carry out their donation process with the concept ‘One Token = One Meal’ where one buys each token at a cost of Rs 30 at restaurants which would have been deposited in the collection box at the cash counter. Once every week, volunteers of the Food Bank will visit the outlet and collect as many meals against the number of coupons that have been collected that week. Currently, the organization is tied up with 3 restaurants in the city and has the collection boxes at Bay Leaf in Chromepet, Akshaya Bhavan in T. Nagar and Ganesh Bhavan in Anna Nagar.
Till date, more than 12000 packets have been distributed in Chennai. Food Bank has 16 chapters across the city and 210-odd volunteers scour their assigned areas on a particular day every week to find out the hungry and deliver them home-cooked food.
As the concept is new to the city, Food Bank plans to introduce their own
pamphlets and launch an active social media campaign to spread awareness among the public on donating food to the hunger-stricken.
“In the next few years, I wish to see every street dweller sleep in peace having had their three meals for the day. Many people are willing to help but don’t know where to go. Here, we offer a platform for them either to donate a meal or prepare a meal all by themselves and donate it to the people,” Ms. Mohandas said.
