These volunteers keep hunger at bay with a simple call for an extra meal

Volunteers of 'FeedOne' distribute home-cooked meals among the needy in the city.

While feeding thousands may seem arduous and expensive, three chartered accountants and an engineer came up with a simple idea to make sure health workers and vulnerable communities get their square meals fresh and clean.

Founders of the voluntary initiative FeedOne, chartered accountants Prakash Kedia, Sunny Agarwal, Binay Saraf and engineer Manas Agarwal are no strangers to taking up small projects to help the community in some ways.

As the pandemic rages on, they had a simple request for residents: cook an extra meal.

“Preparing food ourselves will pinch our limited resources since we are not deep-pocketed,” Kedia said, explaining what inspired the four long-time friends to take up the project.

Residents have to prepare one (or more) extra plate of food with their daily meals, pack them in disposable plates and wrappers procured and supplied to apartments by FeedOne (so that no one needs to step out) and drop it at the main gate by 12.15 pm. The team’s logistic partners will pick up the food and deliver it to primary health care centres, orphanages and other communities in the surrounding areas.

Launched on May 3 with just a handful of packets, FeedOne has now distributed more than 26,000 meals in 25 days. As many as 75 apartments from Sarjapur, Koramangala, Jalahalli, JP Nagar and other neighbourhoods have now joined the initiative.

“I am happy to be a cog in the wheel of this initiative,” Sanjay Jain, a volunteer from Elita Promenade in JP Nagar, said. “We have asked the volunteers to prepare only vegetarian meals since it’s easier to administer and segregate.”

Though the team is happy to continue the service as long as they can, Kedia said the immediate aim is to distribute one lakh meals. Already, the team feeds more than 2,000 people a day.