SCVs Key To Community Kitchens

SCVs helped NGOs to organise community kitchens during the march and April 2020 lockdown in India.

- Deven Lad

Mumbai resident Ruben Mascarenhas is busy fielding calls on his mobile. When he is not doing so, he is busy calling SCV operators to drive his social initiative ‘Khaana Chhaiye’, which is part of the ‘Litmus Test Project’. A techie by education and activist by choice, Mascarenhas, along with his friends Pratik Keni and Munaf Kapadia is driving the ‘Khaana Chhaiye’ through crowdfunding and has engaged four Tata Ace SCVs to transport food packets from the Bohri Kitchen restaurant to different parts of the city. Feeding the needy people by the roadside in the times of Novel Coronavirus, the four SCVs and their operators are playing a key role in forwarding the noble cause. Found with essential service stickers on their windshield, the SCVs are being favoured because of their ability to fit the cost and payload requirements of such initiatives. They are also being favoured for their ability to manoeuvre through the narrow streets of the cities and reach out to the truly needy.

Stating that the SCVs are carrying their packets to areas the Western Express Highway, Eastern Express Highway, between Link Road and Juhu Circle, between Andheri and Dahisar, to Masjid Bandar Labour Camp and to Chembur, Mascarenhas expressed that they are finding the mini-trucks of much use as they each can carry around 1000 to 2000 food packets. They are helping the 50 volunteers of ‘Khaana Chahiye’ better coordinate their efforts to distribute 30,000 meals across the megacity every day, he added. Explaining that logistics is a nightmare for any social project in a situation like this (the city is under lockdown and the atmosphere of fear and worry prevalent), Mascarenhas said that his organisation is also reaching out to truck terminals and areas near toll booths to feed stranded truck drivers.