Emergency Food and Medicine for Kolkata's Poorest

Ahmad is 9 and his mother is a rag picker.  She leaves home as early as 3 am to scour the streets for other people's rubbish.  By starting work early she will be first to find the discarded plastic bottles, soft drinks cans and cardboard packaging that will bring her her the best price from the local dealer.   Ahmad's father is a rickshaw driver.  However, like so many frustrated men in the community, he finds it difficult to resist the lure of country liquor at the end of a difficult day. He has to hire his rickshaw and then comply with the owner's restrictions on where he can ply his trade and what he can carry. The 100 rupees or less that he earns will pay for the brief escape the liquor gives him.

When Ahmad wakes up in their shelter beside the Topsia canal, his father is asleep and his mother is at work.  Ahmad is hungry.  He knows he should go to school, but he hates the lessons and it is hard to concentrate when you haven't had breakfast. Often he'll skip school and head onto the streets to go rag picking: it feels good to have a few rupees to give his mother when she gets home.

Because of the extremely difficult and chaotic lives Ahmad and his friends lead, they rarely get more than one or two meals a day and this will be mostly rice.  Their diet lacks the variety and nutrients needed for healthy growth and development.   

Since January this year Tiljala SHED has, with your help, been able to provide a nutritious meal to 450 vulnerable people like Ahmad every Saturday lunchtime.  Dal, rice, vegetables and an egg provide a nutritious and balanced meal. Moreover, this is an opportunity for the community to come together, for Tiljala SHED 's staff to encourage the children to attend school and to educate families on nutrition. Ahmad loves coming along on Saturdays, queuing up with his friends and then the wonderful feeling of a full stomach.