International Food ReliefBhaktivinoda Ṭhākura’s
International Food ReliefBhaktivinoda Thakura's
"No one within ten miles of our temples should go hungry," Srila Prabhupada once told his disciples. This compassionate concern for the undernourished led to the establishment of ISKCON Food Relief, which for the past ten years has provided prasadam to hundreds of thousands of hungry people in Asia and Africa. In 1977 one of the biggest floods in recent history inundated West Bengal. Hare Krsna members on the scene immediately went into action. Risking their lives, they traveled in small boats equipped with outboard motors over hundreds of miles of dangerously raging floodwaters to procure staples such as rice and dal They then cooked these ingredients on the rooftop of their own flooded ashram building and transported the food by the boatload to isolated villages, saving thousands from starvation. Recently ISKCON members have been working with CARE and Indian local governments in a joint program (the West Bengal Council for Child Welfare's Mother-Child Nutritional Health Program). Over 360,000 plates of nutritious Hare krsna-prasadam have been distributed in this massive effort. CARE official R. K. Narula stated that the ISKCON distribution centers "are being run very efficiently."
In the West, the Hare Krsna movement has been distributing free prasadam meals to the unemployed and others living below the poverty level through its Hare Krsna Food for Life program. In America, Hare Krsna Food for Life currently feeds thousands of people each week in twenty-five cities. Elizabeth Reuther (Lekhasravanti dasi), daughter of Walter Reuther, the late United Auto Workers labor union president, and now an ISKCON member, helped launch Food for Life in Detroit.
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