Where there’s a will there’s a way. Robin Hood’s Army, Sri Lanka, has been around for a few months now, with an impressive record of their work already spreading. In keeping with the name, Robin
Hood’s Army is on a mission, i.e. to collect leftover food from restaurants and distribute them among the homeless in Colombo. Shahid Naushad and Hanzalah Haroon, two of the founders, spoke about the beginning of their project and its progress.
The founders of Robin Hood’s Army comprises around 25 volunteers, mostly students. They said that a 60 year old volunteer joined them recently and that their team is growing every week.
Their main challenge is to get the restaurants to join their cause. So far, the volunteers and the restaurants have collaborated with them through personal contacts and by word of mouth.
“We lack resources at the moment to build a partnership with another non-profit organization”, Haroon said.
They have conditions for the restaurants too, that the food should be freshly cooked, and all of them taste the food before packing them for distribution, thus ensuring that the food is in good condition and fit for consumption.
“The fact that we collect excess food, doesn’t mean that the food isn’t fresh.
If the food has been left over by a customer because it is not edible, we can’t pack them for others,” Haroon said.
From the hotels, they ask for leftover food from Saturday’s lunch, to be consumed that very night. They finish packing by 4.30-5.00 pm and distribute the parcels around 6.00 pm.
Flood affected victims still living in tents in Meethotamulla is one of their target areas where they reach out to around 800 families. It is their mission to walk in and out without much noise, so that it wouldn’t make the recipients of the parcels uncomfortable.
They are looking for more areas for food distribution and in order not to be deceived, they intend to send a scouting team to investigate whether these people are truly deserving or not.
At present, Saffron Kitchen is providing them with food. “People have asked us whether they could donate money, which we have refused. If they are willing to give us freshly cooked food, we would be happy to accept,” he added.
Their target community lacks basic necessities, food, clothes, shelter, but providing them with food instead of money always meant something special to this young team.
“Having the basic necessities, we feel privileged, and believe that it is our duty to share and appreciate what we have,” Naushad said.
However, Naushad said, excess food is, most of the time excess for a reason. So, there are instances when it is not edible.
“So, we are thinking of a token system where customers can pay for an extra packet of food and put a token into a box placed in the restaurant. We can collect the tokens at the end of the day and buy the food.”
On the first day of distribution, they had six volunteers and prepared 100 parcels, and then our friends spread the word around and by the second week we had 10-12 volunteers and prepared around 240 parcels.
“Some volunteers bought food from their homes as well,” Haroon said, adding that their aim is to distribute 5,000 food parcels at the end of the year. Many youth groups have already contacted Robin Hood’s Army to start similar programs in their areas, to which their advice is to check their locality and find areas where the vulnerable live, and start their own project in areas they know best.
“If they need our help to reach out to organizations, we are ready to support them,” Naushad said.
(I.Y.K.)