A fridge that keeps giving

With a tag ‘Sharing is Caring’, a fridge stands outside the newly opened Balayya Sastry Layout-branch of Kaloreez. This is not your usual fridge, but one that seeks to encourage people to deposit their left over or surplus food that can feed the hungry homeless. This is Visakhapatnam’s first public refrigerator that will hopefully tackle the twin problems of hunger and food wastage. The 280 litres single door fridge has six compartments where the food handed over by the people are neatly segregated and placed in parcels. This public fridge is open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.

And this is how it works. People can drop their food parcel with the staff of the restaurant who will check the condition of the food and then put it inside the fridge. The refrigerated food is then collected at night at 10.30 p.m. and distributed to those who need it across the city. This happens every day. “We distribute the food at areas like RTC Complex and near the Railway Station where homeless people spend their nights on footpaths,” says restaurant owner, S V Prabha. Mostly rice, curries and fruits are handed over by the neighbourhood people. The restaurant itself contributes on an average more than five portions of food every day.

“We bear the cost of the fridge and the electricity, and keep it on for 24 hours a day, every day,” says Prabha who strongly urges people not to bin the leftover food in their homes. “People stock food for days and then throw them away. Instead use this refrigerator,” she urges and has a request that when they do drop off the extra food they should ensure the food is edible and packed securely. Only cooked food, apart from fruits and milk, can be given for the public fridge.

Hardly two weeks old, and the social media is abuzz with the initiative. S. Padma Devi, a resident of Balaya Sastry Layout says: “This public fridge is a wonderful way to reach out to the needy. We are not mindful at all about the amount of food we waste all the time at home,” she rues.

Padma got her children to pack over the leftover food and drop it off at the public refrigerator. She feels in this way, the children would know how precious food can be and how there are many in the city who go to bed hungry.

Kaloreez is also reaching out to event organisers to hand over the excess food at parties and functions to them. Prabha hopes more volunteers will come forward to distribute the food to the hungry and share in the good deed.

Wall of Kindness

An initiative that originated in Iran a couple of years ago is now spreading its warmth in Visakhapatnam. It is the ‘Wall of Kindness’ located outside Lions Club of Visakhapatnam at Ramnagar, that invites people to donate clothes anonymously by hanging them across a wall. ‘Leave what you don’t need’ and ‘Take what you do,’ is the philosophy.

Started by Lions Club of Visakhapatnam at Ramnagar in May this year, the idea has caught on. Every day, the members of the club segregate the donated clothes to neatly hang them across the ‘wall’. “On an average we get about 40 people who turn up to pick up clothes they need,” says Mahesh M Malla, secretary of the club. “It also safeguards the self-respect as people can pick up what they need and no one will question them, ,” he adds. The area around Ramnagar has many hospitals that have people coming from far and near. “Many of these patients and their family members come here to pick up clothes. This is a discreet way to help them,” says Mahesh.

Sunil Behara, a labourer from Odisha, says: “I brought my son for his heart treatment here and we had no clothes to see us through the long days in the hospital. My wife told me about the wall. I could pick up a few shirts for my son from there.” The ‘wall’ is open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Once in two days, clothes for women and children are placed there and it is heartening to learn many people turn up with baskets of clothes to donate.

The members now want to also start putting up utensils and other utility products on the wall once in a month. “Our next plan is to set up these ‘walls’ in places where a large section of needy people reside. We want to put up the Wall of Kindness in major slum areas of the city,” says Mahesh.