Mother Teresa once said, “If you can’t feed a hundred people then just feed one.” MFD Alka Chitnis has followed her steps and decided to feed one poor family every day during the lockdown.
It all started when Alka spotted some hungry kids in the nearby area while buying some essential items. She then decided to provide the family of those kids with some daily essentials to cook.
Soon she recognized many such daily wagers like carpenters and painters who lived with their families in nearby chawls were struggling to make ends meet. Initially, she distributed ration packets to over 30 such families. The packets included matchbox, candles, sugar, salt, eggs, poha, flour, tea, coffee, milk, rice and some masala for them to cook everyday meals.
In the process, she realised that there are families who had exhausted their gas cylinders and had no money to renew it. Shen then started cooking two meals a day for those families. Now, for the past three months, she has been providing meals to 20-25 people every day and distributing ration packets as well.
Alka said, “Watching kids starve aches my heart and I want to do everything I can to help such families survive, be it spending my savings or waking up 2 hours early to cook for them. In the last three months I have spent around Rs 3 lakh to provide monthly ration packages to over 30 families and cooking meals twice a day for over 20 people.”
Alka, who lost her husband 28 years ago, has been running her own advisory firm ‘The Investment Corner’ for the last 11 year. She manages Rs 50 crore AUM with a good mix of retail, HNI and corporate clients. Prior to this, Alka was a banker for 25 years with United Western Bank where she handled third party insurance.
Cafemutual wishes Alka all the strength to keep up the good work.
