When three friends from Delhi started the Robin Hood Army five years ago, all they wanted was to take food from a place of plenty to a place of shortage.
Mr Neel Ghose, one of the founders, said his friends had surplus food that could feed about 150 people.
“When we went looking, to my surprise, just 10 minutes away from our upmarket neighbourhoods, we found thousands of hungry people under flyovers and bridges. That’s when I realised that we had been living in a bubble,” he said.
India has the largest absolute number of hungry people in the world but also wastes about 40% of the food it produces.
“Serving people once in a while might feel good because you’re doing something charitable, but you’re not addressing the scale of the problem,” Mr Ghose added.
Mr Ghose, then 27, worked in Zomato, a restaurant listing and food delivery app. While setting up the company’s global market in Portugal in June 2014, he discovered Refood, an organisation that eliminated food waste by distributing it to the needy.
Back in India, Mr Ghose and his friends decided to create a similar movement at home.
From a dozen volunteers in Delhi in 2014, the Robin Hood Army now serves food in 171 cities across 13 countries, including Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brazil. Over 50,000 active volunteers distribute meals using their own vehicles and funds – without accepting money for their services.
Mr Rajkumar Rathi, a 59-year-old chartered accountant from Pune city and a “Robin” for more than four years said: “Doing this work makes me value the three meals I am privileged to eat every day.”
Mr Rathi coordinates the Robin Hood Army’s Pune city chapter, the biggest with about 3,000 volunteers in 20 neighbourhood sub-chapters. Volunteers are largely students and young adults in corporate jobs.
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Source: The Straits Times, 28 January 2020