You’re at a restaurant with a group of friends or family, the waiter brings a bread basket which no one at the table really cares for. Once the entrees are served, the waiter picks up the bread basket and knowing that it will go stale if served later to another customer, he dumps it in the trash can. The same happens if the entrée you ordered has extra chilies or just wasn’t the standard you were expecting. All leftover food at cafes, buffets and hotels (especially at weddings) is trashed. The freshly-cooked food that could have provided meals to at least a couple of dozen hungry people is thrown away. Taking this aspect into consideration, THALI (a non-profit organisation) was established by young professionals who take time out from their day jobs to provide meals for the less fortunate, meals that many take for granted. Set up in 2009, THALI currently works in Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

The idea behind this is to collect leftover food from buffets of different restaurants, hotels and catering services and distribute it among the lower income class who go without a proper meal for days. It is a novel concept in Pakistan where we often take so much for granted and our lavish ways have only contributed to the increase in the disparity between the different strata of society. Just recently, according to a study by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, almost half the population (48 per cent) of the country is food insecure. In these times, the importance of the work being done by young members of THALI cannot be emphasised.

Zoone Abbas who works in a local telecom company is the chief executive officer of THALI. “The idea of THALI is not to just distribute food among the hungry, far from it - the main objective is to fight against this ever growing apathy where we have become indifferent towards a major section of our society.” The apathy Abbas talks about is something each of us, involuntarily, does everyday - the leftover food at our dinner tables waiting to be thrown away when thousands around the country go without proper meals.

THALI first took off with a project called ‘Be My guest Campaign.’ The young volunteers started by personally going to restaurants after work each day, to collect food.  This was then delivered by hand as individual meal packs at the doors of the hungry. They soon realised that finding the hungry was apparently easier than convincing a large number of restaurants to join their initiative. Many restaurants would often prefer throwing the food away rather than giving them to THALI.

Last winter THALI came up with another idea - this time, they decided to reach out to the policemen standing at the police pickets performing duties for long hours. Getting food delivered everyday by the young volunteers was certainly a pleasant surprise for the policemen, who weren’t used to people being considerate towards them. The campaign called ‘Picket Plate’ was hardly an act of charity, instead it was a token of gratitude for the people who sacrifice their comfort and endanger their own lives for our security. THALI served 400 meals fresh from the stove at pickets around the Capital in this manner.

Rabia Pasha, another passionate young individual and THALI’s trust secretary, says, “THALI has several projects running simultaneously and we have served 7,000 beneficiaries to date. The projects have, with time, ventured into other focus areas such as health awareness and education. Although it currently operates from Islamabad and Rawalpindi, THALI aims at branching out to other cities in Pakistan – giving everyone a helping hand and a reason to smile.”

Currently, the team at THALI is also working on a literacy initiative called ‘Food for Thought.’ According to this initiative, THALI will provide children from lower income families with a healthy meal in exchange for their enrollment at a primary school. This way, the poorest of families can send their children to schools, enabling them to become contributing members of the society. On hearing about this initiative, the Bolsa Familia in Brazil comes to mind where families earned monthly stipends on sending their children to school and getting them vaccinated on time. Even if the government is not thinking on such lines (even though the Benazir Income Support Program), could in some way be implemented in this manner) there are volunteers around the country and organizations like THALI who want to make a positive contribution to society. It is refreshing to see such innovation and commitment by members of THALI to introduce a long-term plan by not just providing food, but also by encouraging education.

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.