Feeding From Far distributes over 2.5 lakh meals in Mumbai slums

Mumbai, India: Ahead of World Kindness Day, Feeding From Far, a unique hunger-alleviation initiative targeted at disadvantaged sections recently saw a highly encouraging success of their ‘Khushiyon Ka Bag’ campaign. With 35,000 meals being distributed each fortnight, the campaign that caters to slum dwellings in the city such as Dharavi and Machhimar Nagar hit a milestone of 2.5L meals within just three months of it’s launch.

‘Khushiyon Ka Bag’ operates through a volunteer-driven community, where volunteers residing nearby identify the beneficiaries and drive packing and distribution to ensure the smooth functioning of the entire operation. The beneficiaries are families and widows who were worst hit by Covid-19 and are still battling economically due to the slowdown caused by the pandemic. Till date 1,12,000 meals have been delivered to Machhimar Nagar – a quaint fishing village in south Mumbai,with nearly 30 young volunteersspearheading the project at a community level and 1,40,000 meals to Dharavi areahelmed by 50 volunteers between the 25 – 35 age group.

With a hope to spur the mindset of community welfare and ignite thespirit of generosity and social development among people, Feeding From Far endeavors to incite people into action by aiding them with digital support to transform their intent into action. The goal is to get the community and privileged sections of the society to join in and contribute through volunteering and funds.

Paritosh Pant, Founder, Feeding From Far said, “Our beneficiaries have benefitted hugely from our efforts and we are glad to have created a robust network of givers and relievers who are helping us scale our reach to newer geographies. An idea that became an instant reality during the lockdown, I am proud that we’ve been able to sustain our outreach and pose strong as weapons of hunger-destruction among the voices lost and forgotten in the last two years. Our continuity plan is bringing succor to families still reeling with the aftermath of the pandemic and we hope to stretch our wings to newer territories across India.

And while ‘Khushiyon Ka Bag’ is seeing good response in terms of community participation and success in catering to beneficiary needs, we have a long way to go because of the yawning gap in our society. We are looking forward to more people joining us to spread kindness and compassion for our fellow humans – both as volunteers and providers/donors as we set out to expand our capacity to 1L meals fortnightly. Our aim is to recast into a unified digital product and operate a de-centralized community engagement model of inspired changemakers.”