BENGALURU: Following the success of a community refrigerator at Brookefield, started a year ago, two more street refrigerators will be installed in Mahadevapura in 10 days. The idea is to ensure that food is not wasted and instead placed in the refrigerator for people in need to consume for free.
The two units are part of a pilot project and the residents of the area plan to have nine refrigerators. This initiative is undertaken by the Mahadevapura Task Force (MTF), a platform started by MLA Aravind Limbavali, where citizens of the constituency work in tandem with government officials for various developmental projects.

“We plan to have one fridge in Maithri Layout in Kadugodi and another near Fun City on ITPL Main Road. Residents and hotels near by can contribute food items to store in the refrigerator. Next to it, we will place a cupboard for people to give away clothes, books, toys and shoes. There will be a security guard who will maintain a record of who gives what. In case of food, the resident must enter their contact details, along with the expiry date of the food,” said Hari Prasad Reddy, member of Maithri layout resident welfare association (RWA) and part of the public private partnership segment of MTF.

The RWA is in talks with New Horizon Group of Institutions for funding and estimates that around `1,00,000 will be needed to be invest in the fridge, cupboard, electricity connection , etc.
“There are three slums nearby, construction labourers working in the area, people selling items like pens, glasses, etc at junctions like Hope Farm signal. There is a floating migrant population, several people who live in make-shift sheds in Marathahalli. These people will be benefitted by the community fridge and cupboard,” Reddy said. He added that the food will be kept between 8am and 7pm and cleared as per the expiry date mentioned by the giver. Even those who take the food must sign their names, in order to maintain a track record of people using the facility.

The RWA is taking the help of residents from Brookefield, who have been successfully running the community refrigerator and cupboard for a year now. When the initiative kicked-off, there was no guard or system of record keeping. This affected the cleanliness of the place and quality of food and items donated, which is why the residents decided to improve the system.

Richard D, a resident of Brookefield layout, said, “We started this initiative to create a culture of giving. For example, my daughter ordered two cakes for her birthday, the second one just to be kept in the community refrigerator.”

From their records, 7,000 meals or food items have been served in the past year by residents and the contribution from hotels has been around 4,000 kg of food. “Even paying guest accommodations have begun contacting us, asking how they can donate food. The food generally includes rice, chapattis, curries, sweets, etc,” Richard said.