Delhi siblings help raise funds to keep Inspector’s community kitchen going

16-year-old girl, her 20-year-old sister raise ₹50,000 for initiative that feeds slum dwellers, migrants in south-east Delhi

April 18, 2020 09:48 am | Updated 09:51 am IST - New Delhi

Inspector Suman Kumar’s community kitchen feeds around 800 people daily.

Inspector Suman Kumar’s community kitchen feeds around 800 people daily.

A Class 12 student and her elder sister have taken to crowdfunding to keep a Delhi Police Inspector’s community kitchen for slum dwellers and migrant workers stranded in south-east Delhi going.

Sarita Vihar residents Tarini (16), who studies at D.P.S R.K Puram, and Ananya Kapoor (20), an undergraduate student at Stanford University said they decided to leverage technology to raise and contribute ₹50,000 to keep Inspector Suman Kumar’s community kitchen afloat as the number of people being fed daily under the initiative has gone up to around 800 from an estimated 300 when it began in late March.

“We heard about the kitchen from our parents who have been contributing and decided to go beyond contributing just food and ration to it,” said Ananya who returned to the Capital from the U.S. in early March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Both my sister and I would have liked to volunteer ourselves but this epidemic hasput a lot of emphasis on social distancing...but, at the same time, a very large number of people are struggling. So we decided to utilise technology,” Tarini said.

The siblings said they already have a community service initiative — Help Us Skill — which imparts underprivileged children, especially girls, learn life skills like computers, basic English and math. Utilising a popular online crowdfunding platform, the two said they were able to raise ₹50,000 within three days.

As reported by The Hindu on April 5, Inspector Kumar, while performing duties related to his deployment as Night Checking Officer on March 27, came across a stream of migrant workers braving the rain to inch as close as they could to their hometowns in the dead of the night.

Posted as Inspector Investigation at the local police station, Mr. Kumar tried but could not succeed in finding shelter for them given apprehensions related to the infectious nature of COVID-19 despite knocking on several doors.

Over the next 12 hours, however, he was successful at utilising his failure for something better.

Since then, the Sarita Vihar resident has overseen a community kitchen set up by him in his and the Kapoor siblings’ neighbourhood in the C block seeking to ensure that stranded migrant workers, out-of-work daily wagers or unemployed cobblers, watchmen, e-rickshaw drivers and housemaids among others residing at slum clusters such as Madanpur Khadar, the Mohan Cooperative Area or in the vicinity of the Jasola redlight do not go hungry.

‘A continuous process’

“It is a continuous process; we have prepared a list of residents across such vocations and get calls asking what we are busy with if we are late,” Mr. Kumar said. The initiative, which began with the distribution of small food packets containing one orange, one banana and a packet of biscuits gradually had poori subzi added to it; now, Mr. Kumar also distributes dry ration kits.

“These have 5kgs of aata, 1 kg each of rice, dal, oil, salt and one soap; what these kids have done is more than commendable. Every drop counts. We are now able to reach around 800 individuals per day and the number is gradually increasing ,” he said.

Using crowdfunding to make a positive impact, Tarini and Ananya said, was a learning experience for them. “We are grateful to get the opportunity to serve our community in these tough times. The overwhelming support has motivated us to do more in the future,” they said.

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