Food for Life

Update by Tina Savani, Food for Life Volunteer

As the lockdown has slowly eased, there has been an increased demand for free nutritional meals and drinks in the city of London. The Food for Life (FFL) team proudly continued in their unflinching service to feed the homeless freshly cooked nutritional prasadam, snacks and drinks as well as any other essential items, six days a week from Monday to Saturday.

Many people have contributed to the successful operation of the service during the pandemic including the front-line volunteers, the coordinators who have looked after the purchase of items, kept a tab on stock, ensured the service runs smoothly, recruited and retained volunteers, carried out marketing activities and resolved any issues. The generous donors who have donated money or items have been extremely useful, and of course last but not least, Parasurama dasa and the Food for All (FFA) team have been exceedingly helpful and accommodating by providing their premises, kitchen, ingredients, appliances and anything else the team may need to operate, without which the FFL service would not be possible.

In recent developments, the FFL team have created health and safety videos with the help of Olivia Schubert from the FFA team to guide new volunteers and provide useful information about the service, kitchen facilities, safe use of appliances and all other aspects of health and safety. Other videos such as how to offer prasadam, information about parking restrictions, maintaining cleanliness of the van, PPE equipment, have also been created by Acutya Charan dasa and Krishna Kanta devi dasi.

Many new drivers and front-line volunteers have come on board in the last couple of months, namely Amit Vyas, Dharmesh Modi, Dipak Sapat, Parijat Sinha, Sahil Dodhia and Sanjay Gohil, who have all very kindly stepped in when there was a real need for drivers or volunteers.

The FFL team would like to say a special thank you to the following volunteers who have been exceptionally inspirational in their contribution to the FFL service:

• Acutya Charan dasa, his wife Krishna Kanta devi dasi and their twin six-year-old daughters Radha Priya and Krishna Priya, have been helping as a family on a regular basis. The girls have baked delicious homemade cookies and cupcakes with the help of their mother to serve to the homeless. The treats went down really well with the recipients.

• Alessandra Ponticelli helped to raise money to buy over 40 sleeping bags for those that were in genuine need. The recipients were extremely grateful and it has made a real positive difference to them.

• Axel and Sophie Steenberg from Steenbergs donated large amounts of khichari spice mix to make delicious khichari.

• Linda Bawden selflessly travels to Luton to collect donations and brings back to the Temple.

• Rahul Singh has been a very enthusiastic and valued regular volunteer and driver since the start of the pandemic.

• Sat, another dedicated regular volunteer, has been tremendously inspiring and an incredible asset to the team. He has cleaned up messes, dealt with broken vans and carried heavy items.

• Scott Warrington has selflessly given up his time six evenings a week during the pandemic and will now continue to be with the team until he goes back to work in October.

• Vinod Tailor has organised large food donations to both FFA and FFL.

The FFL team would like to thank everyone involved, new and old volunteers alike, who have made this service possible and without whom many hundreds of people would not be fed their daily meal and most importantly would not be receiving Krishna’s mercy in the form of prasadam.

“It has been amazing and an absolute privilege to help feed the needy at the Food for Life service. It has however been sad at the same time, sad to see so many people without shelter, with all the resources on this planet this should not be the case. Gandhi famously quoted that there is enough for everyone’s needs but not enough for everyone’s greed”. Brian Clarke and Bella Santousi, Food for Life Volunteers