COVID-19: IIT Kanpur community kitchen preparing food for kids

NEW DELHI: A professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur), with the help of his colleagues and students, is running a community kitchen feeding 800 street children daily.

Laxmidhar Behera from the electrical engineering department is managing a kitchen at the campus community centre that cooks and distributes food packets to poor children living around the campus.

These children belong mainly to families of migrant workers who lost their jobs when the 21-day lockdown was imposed in the country to combat COVID-19.

The Hindustan Times quoted Behra saying: “We cook rajma, puri-sabzi, khichdi or rawa halwa at our community centre. Several colleagues, their spouses and students are also assisting me.”

Instead of working in laboratories, Behra and his team can be seen working the large sized cooking utensils in the kitchen.

On why he thought of running a kitchen for poor daily wagers, he told Hindustan Times : “Principal of a school which these kids attend approached me to help in providing them meals.”

The IIT Kanpur fraternity consisting of faculty, students and staff are also contributing money to help run this kitchen.

Meanwhile, the number of food packets is increasing every day.

S Ganesh, deputy director at IIT Kanpur told Hindustan Times , “This volunteer group has been distributing food packets in the nearby areas for the past six days. For the initial three days, 250 packets were distributed by the group…. After the broader involvement of the campus

community, there has been a substantial increase in the number of food packets distributed. Now an NGO has partnered in running the community kitchen.”

On March 31, 500 food packets were prepared and distributed. On April 2, nearly 700 cooked meal packets were prepared and now the number had increased to 800, Behra told Hindustan Times .

Also read:

• COVID-19 Lockdown: 325 Delhi Govt schools will distribute food
• Coronavirus: Delhi Govt to provide packed mid-day meal at doorstep

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