15 May,2018 08:04 AM IST | Mumbai | Gaurav Sarkar
The fridge was installed at the Anna Punjabi restaurant in Andheri East on Monday evening. Pic/Sayyed Sameer Abedi
In an effort to fridge the gap between donating food and ensuring it reaches those who need it the most, an organisation has partnered with a restaurant in Andheri to set-up a 200-litre community refrigerator. The fridge was installed at the Anna Punjabi restaurant on Monday, in collaboration with the Round Table India (RTI) organisation.
Food in the bank
Nilay Jain, chairman, MMRT 200, a Mumbai-based table said, "A community fridge or food bank is a refrigerator where the extra food can be stored, and then taken by those who need it." Jain added that on days when people didn't deposit food, the restaurant would do so.
"While anyone living in the vicinity can deposit food in the bank, the restaurant itself will put a lot of food every day. In fact, that's why partnering with a restaurant was very important. They are going to help us in maintaining it on a day-to-day basis. Our volunteer members from RTI will also visit the facility time to time." The fridge has been installed with a cage around it to keep it safe and secure. Both of these came at a cost of Rs 40,000. When asked how many people they hope to benefit from this endeavour, Jain said, "We don't know the exact number yet. This is our pilot installation and we want to keep a close watch on the numbers for the future planning."
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Spreading the word
RTI members would be spreading the word about the fridge in their respective communities. Jain acknowledged such fridges had been previously installed in other restaurants, but the steam from them seemed to be dying down. "Any community activity needs to be done on a sustained basis. Also, with RTI we have a large network young people available across India. So if we want to scale up any worthy idea, we have great national team available for us."
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