Almost all local outlets have extended full support to the innovative municipality scheme to make the Kerala district ‘hunger-free’.
Food-on-Wall, an innovative municipal welfare project to feed hungry people was launched this week by Malappuram, a rural district 50 km south of the Kerala town of Kozhikode.
The scheme aimed at providing food to the needy will work in tandem with the local population and restaurants in and around Malappuram town. The three-part system is interestingly simple as each restaurant is responsible for managing this on its own, thereby eliminating the need oversight and bureaucracy.
It works by the restaurant offering a special low-cost meal, which is funded by donations from its guests. Each time a meal it donated, a token is hung on a special board on the restaurant’s wall, hence the name Food-on-Wall. To get his free meal, a needy person has simply to take one token from the many hanging on the wall and hand it to the service staff. It will be served to him in the restaurant.
Over 64 restaurants in this small town have already signed up for the programme.
Municipal Chairman K.P. Mustafa said that it was the philanthropic zest of the people of Malappuram which drove him to think differently to address the hunger of the poor. “It will not make any discrimination at the restaurant. The needy person will just have to hand over the token at the counter and eat the meal,” he said.
The municipality introduced the Food-on-Wall scheme along with the Akshayapathram project, which installed a couple of freezers on the its streets encouraging people to place their excess food in them so that the needy could have it.
The municipality introduced the novel scheme by tying up with the Kerala Hotel and Restaurants Association (KHRA).
