If you feed the person, then you feed the soul. That is my belief when it comes to Annadhaanam, or the art of giving food to the poor and the homeless.
I wanted to cultivate Annadhaanam Seva as I noticed a lot of homeless people within my home town of Wichita, Kansas. More than one hundred of these people had no home, food or shelter, and were out in the cold nights on the streets. My journey to help these people started with me investigating the Kansas food bank, who directed me to members of AECH( Advocacy Group for Ending Chronic Homelessness). During my investigation, I found a small conglomeration of the city’s churches which have a temporary housing program from November to March, to give them a hot supper and a warm bed for the night. The homeless rested there and were forced to go out after breakfast into the streets. The breakfast and dinner programs were as a result of the church soliciting sponsorship from the community. The people that usually supported this kind of sponsorship were church members themselves .I am hoping and praying that HASC will have the infrastructure one day to care for humanity , provide food and shelter to the needy and less fortunate.
Inspired about 13 years ago by my eight year old daughter then, our family started this Annadhaanam Seva once a month at the Interfaith Inn in Wichita, KS. We usually fed 35 to 40 people, who lived in the Inn temporarily till they find a home of their own. A few families in the community joined us from time to time. Serving Wichita as an Americorps VISTA for a year helped me to place a consistent feeding program in place, under the auspices of the Utsav Seva.
Going back to the members of the small Indian community in Wichita, I found out that the temples did not have the infrastructure to host the homeless. Also, the volunteer base was really small. About some time into my research, I came across the Kabir Bhakta group, who were primarily from the state of Gujarat in India and their womens’ wing called Mahila Mandal were very compassionate. They are an extremely united group that owned a lot of the hotels, motels and laundromats within the area. Last year they helped me with feeding the people at the Overflow Shelter”. I solicited also with another non-profit organization called PovSolve, started by a young Hindu high school junior, Saajan Bhakta.
Edited by Rema Venkatasubban
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