We often wonder “how tough is my life?,” but if we look around, there are many people who are facing tougher challenges than us. It is not always about food, shelter, or clothing, but also getting the right education to stand on your own feet so that you can offer a helping hand to someone tomorrow. Giving back is not an act, it is a feeling which is beyond words, and the biggest reward is the realization that you’ve made a change in someone’s life.
When CEPTES joined the global Pledge 1% movement, we had only one thought in our mind, “Let’s try to feed every hungry soul.” There are hundreds of families who go to bed on an empty stomach. Every human deserves food, shelter, and clothing with education & healthcare. So in order to give it back to the community 1% of our time, profit and product, we started an initiative called “Community Fridge“. This initiative is being led by our co-founder Mr. Priyaranjan Panigrahy for CEPTES.
A community fridge is a small initiative which is enabling allies in and around the Indian city of Bengaluru to join hands in order to offer food to poor and needy people. We have placed a public fridge for those having surplus food to supply. Needy people can then come and get food from this community fridge. It allows us to feed people who are unprivileged without hurting their dignity.
This initiative soon caught the eyes of many local residents and nearby restaurants who are now keeping food inside the fridge. Initially, our community fridge was feeding 20-30 people every day, but with time the number of food donors has significantly increased, and our community fridge is now serving around 80-100 people every day. Whenever we see someone needy having food from our community fridge, it gives us great motivation and belief that we are really giving it back.
Sometimes the tiniest generous act can ignite change and spread a positive impact in the society by offering a revived sense of hope. The small community fridge which started serving food is now offering free books, as well as toys, to unprivileged kids. Every month, we conduct an event in our office for all our employees, where each one of them contributes their time in collecting food as well as books, clothes, and toys for our community fridge.
