Celebrity chef Vikas Khanna to conduct world’s largest food drive for migrants

NEW DELHI :

IT WAS a spam email seeking donation for an old age home that directed New-York-based chef Vikas Khanna’s attention to the plight of lakhs of migrant workers stuck across India without food and shelter. He realised how the lockdown was affecting them adversely and decided to help. In a couple of days with help from social media, he managed to create a network of general stores and truck drivers to source and distribute food — cooked as well as dry ration — to those in need.

The Michelin star chef, over the last two and a half months, with support from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and Mumbai-based communication firm Maximus Collabs, has distributed over nine million meals across 125 cities including Varanasi, Bengaluru, Mangalore, Kolkata and Mumbai. Khanna’s next food drive — ‘Barkat’ — in Delhi-NCR on Wednesday, is set to be the largest in the world, with the distribution of two million meals in a single day.

This drive, however, will particularly be directed at vulnerable communities like the differently-abled, transgenders, and sex-workers. “I am humbled to work on an event tirelessly that supports people with disabilities, transgenders, sex-workers, AIDS patients, orphanages, old-age homes and leprosy centres. “We will also be reaching out to abandoned parents’ homes.