Refrigerated truck to serve food to the underprivileged community

THE PROBLEM

Kechara Soup Kitchen has been serving the community of Malaysia since 2006.

We help poor families, homeless people and residents of shelter homes in Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Johor Bahru, Perak and Melaka via food and welfare aid to help them to be financially independent.

Kechara Soup Kitchen runs a soup kitchen and food bank at the same time. However, a lot of our work is not necessarily about food. Food is one aspect that we use to keep in contact and form a relationship with our clients to help them open up and see how we can help them to be financially independent through job matching, skills training, rehabilitation programs, sheltering and much more. We have benefited over 1,500 homeless people nationwide and 350 poor families through our food bank and soup kitchen projects.

THE SOLUTION

Now, to perform our services better, we need a refrigerated truck for our food bank operations. A refrigerated truck will definitely enable us to pick up more surplus vegetables/fruits / cooked food from donors and distribute them to the urban poor and underprivileged charity homes. There are currently 350 such families and 40 charity homes that we have been benefiting on a rotation basis and we currently only have one truck to do so. A refrigerated truck will help us grow and benefit even more people in need. As times are bad, we fear that there will be more and more families on the brink of homelessness suffer in the coming year. There is also a strong possibility that flood will hit some parts of the east coast and as a food bank, we strive to use the truck to help deliver donated items to the affected areas.

How the funds will be used:

• Refrigerated Truck = RM108,000
• Driver’s salary (1 year) = RM24,000
• Fuel (1 year) = RM12,000

THE IMPACT

Who do we help?

The families in our care are those of single mothers, elderly couples with no child support, families who have problems paying their bills due to tragic accidents or health issues or families with many children. One of the families we serve consists of three single mothers with a total of 18 children staying in the same house.

We recently helped a couple with 11 children staying in a small flat. They constantly starve because the father’s income is too low. Through our food bank and frequent deliveries of surplus food, they now have enough to eat and also extra money to spend on the kids’ education. We enrolled the mother into our skills training program to do patching work. She now earns an extra income to pay for their monthly house rental. The eldest son just finished his high school and is currently working at our food bank as a general worker. He is now taking skills lessons like computer, driving and language to help him stand on his own feet. With his pay, his family is now able to live a better life.

Donate now to help us deliver more food to those in need!