Dabbawalas have tied up with wedding planners and caterers from across the city to feed the needy.
In a first, Mumbai's famous Dabbawalas have come up with the 'Roti Bank' initiative - a plan to prevent wastage of food at social gatherings.
As per the initiative, leftovers from occasions like birthday parties and weddings are being given to the poor.
To expand the initiative, Dabbawalas have tied up with wedding planners and caterers from across the city.
"Food gets wasted in weddings, so, we had a tie up with the Mumbai Dabbawalas Association and I talked to them, they agreed. So we decided that the waste food in the regions of Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai will be collected by them and will be distributed among the needy," said wedding planner Rishikesh Kadam, who is now actively involved with the cause.
Nearly 400 dabbawalas are working round the clock to pull off this non-profit initiative. Although it's been just over 10 days, the response has been overwhelming.
"We got around 100 phone calls in a span of days, but we have a limitation, we have to do our work first and this work later. We want to distribute more food to the poor as far as possible," said Subhash Talekar, a spokesperson of the Dabbawala Union.
The Dabbawalas are now mulling over ways to schedule a pick up even when the quantity of food is less. They are planning to station one member from the union at local stations at all times where people can drop by and hand-over the leftovers.