This World Hunger Day, more than 100 volunteers of Roti Bank, a Delhi-based social organisation, took on the responsibility to feed the hungry in the NCR. The volunteers collected rotis from individual households, housing societies and RWAs across Delhi, Noida and Gurgaon and reached out to hundreds who struggle to even get one square meal a day.
These volunteers not only reached out to the poor on roadsides and in slums but also decided to skip a meal themselves to show their empathy for them.
Rajkumar Bhatia, one of the founder members of Roti Bank, told City Spidey that the organisation had also launched a campaign asking for resident support and solidarity with the poor. “If we have never felt hunger pangs ourselves, we will never know what the poor go through. I was pleasantly surprised to see that until 5 pm, we had as many as 578 individuals from across the NCR stand in support of this campaign by choosing to skip a meal themselves in the day.”
Bhatia further said they had collected almost 6,000 packets of rotis until 5 pm, which had been distributed among the hungry. “Each packet has about two to three rotis. We expect to be able to collect around 20,000 rotis by the end of the day,” he added.
Roti Bank was started by two friends, Sudhir Behrani and Raj Kumar Bhatia, in June 2015 from Azadpur Mandi.
Speaking to City Spidey, Behrani said, “We are urging RWAs and other federations to support the initiative, so not even a single person goes hungry in the city. In fact, many RWAs and societies have shown us support for the initiative.”
City Spidey had earlier reported that the concept of Roti Bank took root when a man came to Behrani looking for employment. “He didn’t even have the money to buy food — and that got me thinking,” Behrani had said. “We are not here to provide food for everyone, but only to those who really can't work, and are forced to starve.”
Volunteers from Roti Bank collect donated rotis from apartments on weekends to distribute to the hungry. There are also more than 50 centres in the NCR where individuals can deposit rotis themselves. Azadpur mandi in East Delhi and Kanoongo Apartments in IP Extension , Puru Apartments in Rohini and Mandakini Enclave in Alaknanda are a few of these centres.
For more information on how to go about it, residents of Noida and Dwarka can call 9891028844 and 9818084738; while those from Gurgaon can call 9999334858.
