Ekta, a Wellington-based charity will start distributing prepared and pre-packed vegetarian meals on a weekly basis in Porirua from July 18. In addition to the pre-packed food, there will also be breads from Pandoro bakery, which Ekta collects under its food rescue program.
Abhishek Sharma from Ekta, who is spearheading the project noted, “Initially, the intention was to carry out the activity from the front of the Little Theatre every Saturday afternoon. But getting Council approval became challenging. We then approached Tony’s Tyre Service, Porirua. They were just wonderful and very encouraging. Anthony the manager, not only allowed us the use of the space but also volunteered to help out if we wanted.”
“Our intention is also to encourage migrant communities to come forward to help contribute towards helping some of the issues that our cities/towns are facing. This is home for us now and the issues that our city is facing are also for us to help resolve by doing our little bit. Migrant communities need to look beyond their own as diversity will only have meaning if we break out of our own silos.”
Ekta is supported by local Porirua residents Foram Shah, Avantika Turukapalli and Sonam Shrivastava, in the project. If anyone would want to volunteer or donate vegetarian meals or groceries or pastries for either the Porirua or Wellington Service, please contact at abhishek@ekta.nz or contact-us@ekta.nz
Update on July 18
The free food service was launched on July 18, successfully. This the first time that the Indian community is stepping forward to provide such a service in Porirua on a regular basis. The service which is operated from Tony’s Tyre Service of 8 Parumoana Street, Porirua was initiated by a few friends living in Porirua and who have been helping out at Ekta’s weekly free food distribution in Wellington.
Foram Gupta one of the volunteers said, “We were very pleased with the number of people who turned up although we had only spread the word around in the last two days. We had prepared around 40 meals and nearly all were collected. We also had 2 x 60 litre containers of breads donated by Pandoro Bakery of Wellington and nearly all of them were distributed.”
The service will run every Saturday initially till the end of winter but may be extended if demand continues. Foram said that they serve home cooked Indian vegetarian food to allow anyone and everyone to have it. “In fact we had a few people who comeback to have more after collecting an initial packet,” she added. Abhishek Sharma from Ekta, who oversees the project said that they are expecting more demand once the word gets out.
-from Ekta
-TIN Bureau