Share your ‘dabba’ to feed street children

Mumbai: An out of the box solution to feeding Mumbai’s hungry street children comes in the unique Share My Dabba initiative which was announced recently.

The Share My Dabba video has already racked up more than 240,000 views since it went up on YouTube last Thursday.

The collaboration between the Happy Life Welfare Society and Dabbawala Foundation offers street children food that is shared by office goers, students and school children.

All one has to do is paste a sticker on her or his tiffin box which will be kept aside by the dabbawallas as volunteers empty out the food to be distributed to the children.

It is well-known that the networking of dabbawallas who carry home-cooked food in tiffins to offices, mostly in South Mumbai, is an extraordinarily efficient system conducted with precision. With 200,000 children going hungry on the streets of Mumbai, this joint venture for a cause with the dabbawallas is being appreciated across the city.

Stressing it is not leftover food that will be given to the children, Kanu Priya Singh, vice-president of the Happy Life Welfare Society, told Gulf News: “Quite often, many don’t want to eat their lunch while others may keep away part of their meal separately so as to willingly share their food.” This way food that may go as wastage is given to the children.

According to Share My Dabba, of the 120 tons of food transported across the city via dabbas, around 16 tons goes to waste.

Singh says dabbawallas who are tight on time converge at six points in the city and disperse within 10 minutes after sorting out the dabbas.

It is during this time that tiffins with stickers will be opened, food emptied and given to street kids who would gather at these segregation points.

One sticky point is that Raghunath Medge of the Dabbawallas Association with 5,000 members says, “We don’t have enough men to carry and deliver the dabbas.

So where is the time to sort out tiffins with stickers and wait till the dabbas are emptied and put back?” He says his organisation has nothing to do with this initiative.

But Singh bravely says: “We have yet to overcome certain hurdles but are getting a tremendous response from offices and restaurants who want to join this initiative. A lot is happening and I believe everything will be streamlined in a month’s time.”