Beating Global Hunger - Think Less, Do More | Neel Ghose | TEDxGateway
what did you do the last time you could not finish dinner you would have packed it in a bag and maybe given it to someone on the street now what you did helped one of 194 million Indians who went hungry that evening having said that did you know 40% of the food produced in our country gets wasted and thrown away now the problem has never been lack of food but access to that food hunger is not something which needs to be solved by the United Nations or the government Logistics can and will provide the solution over the last 5 years I've been working with a startup zamato it's a mobile app through which users can find restaurants in their neighborhood work took me to Portugal where I came across this unique organization called refood what they did was amazing in their free time volunteers would collect excess food from restaurants and give it to the less fortunate wow I was enamored by how simple and how doable this idea was now immediately after coming back to Delhi I got in touch with my old friend Anand we figured we've been making it easier for millions of people to click and find food options why can't we do the same for people who don't have two square meals a day we decided to bring the idea home we had to go back to the startup Basics or matching demand and Supply through simple Logistics Solutions s this is how the Robin Hood Army started our Robins are young professionals and students they do this in their free time it's a very simple model it's hyperlocal in nature what I mean by that is let's say in a locality like a bandra the food will come from restaurants in bandra the people who give the food will be residents of bandra and this will go to homeless people orphanages um HIV patients in the cluster let's have a look at how this works I'm an interior designer and I'm a robin I'm an analyst and I'm a robin I'm a writer and I'm a robin I'm a software engineer and I'm a [Applause] [Music] [Music] robin [Music] a I vividly remember the 26th of August 2014 it was our first food drive a few friends and I were under the horse car flyover of South Delhi we saw a family of six sharing the food from one leftover pizza just down the road there was an old couple the Auntie was LED they were looking for food in a trash can now make no mistake I am brought up in India I have gr we have grown up seeing poverty but what was overwhelming at that moment was that these are our neighbors and we have no idea of the sheer scale of hunger and neglect just 10 minutes from where we lived this got us thinking serving people once in a while might feel good to the conscience but would this create any difference in a place where millions are going hungry it was obvious we had to scale we had to reach more restaurants more people more cities luckily a lot of my friends agreed with this and we started setting up Robin armi chapters across the country anyone could sign up online it was exciting the Press supported us volunteers came by the hundreds Facebook went viral and the best part was restaurant owners were so generous in fact some of them instead of giving excess food actually gave freshly cooked food honestly the Robin Hood Army is not a structured NGO nor is it a large Civic movement it is a simple platform of regular people who want to help and think less and do more now this is not about just merely handing out food I'd like to believe that we have a baseline of compassion in what we do there's this girls orphanage in South Delhi where we've been going through for several months now a lot of the robins who go there happen to be lawyers now while they give the food over the months they've been having animated discussions about why do your homework on time why keep in touch with what's happening in politics small things like even saying thank you or something as in insignificant as taking a selfie the amazing thing is that after months of these discussions and interactions eight of these girls actually want to pursue law as a career now this it doesn't stop here this actually like we've now started something very ambitious called the Robin Hood Academy basically across all our cities in India we have regular weekend classes conducted by the robins for on the street not just for children but also adults the best part is that right now the whole curriculum is structured and now 50 of the young boys and girls who've come out from the academy in the last 2 months are actually now enrolled in local government schools now you must have had that moment where you've read something in a paper and you want to do something about it but you just don't know how right now the awesome thing is that we have a platform where youngsters can actually execute cute real solutions to the problem their local community face in March 2016 there was a severe water drought in the L District of Maharashtra several Farmers had committed suicide our Robins across Mumbai and Pune they actually got the whole neighborhood offices um St uh students colleges and they brought they mobilized 75,000 L of water which they transported through a special train every every Monday Wednesday and Friday think less and do more now as we grew stronger locally we realized the problems we fighting or the battles we fighting are not unique to India alone the first country we spread the Army to was our neighbor Pakistan just working with people from across the border who think and are like us has been a unique experience you agree that hunger is something which goes Way Beyond borders and religions and politics and we now have Robins across Karachi Islamabad and laor in fact this Independence Day our Professionals of on both sides of the Border in India and Pakistan they actually brought the entire startup ecosystem together and we serve food to 500,000 people on the the 14th and 15th of August on both sides of the [Applause] Border did I say young professionals not all the time that's ran he's 3 years old and he comes to distribution with his moment in Hyderabad and that's L auntie auntie is 886 and she comes in NOA when I was Ran's age the only thing I'd worry about is when is my turn to bat this gentleman will go a long long way now we just have one rule in the Robin Hood Army we do not accept monetary donations if you want to help all we require is your time and that too just two hours of your week now you might be wondering okay what does this two hours of the week really do right with no Revenue no employees and no office space Here's how the 2 hours of the week reflects on our balance sheet we've served 1.6 million people through a network of 8,000 Robins spread across four continents thank you the best part on the on the credit side is of course the blessings now the honest truth is this might seem like a lot but the truth is we are barely scratching the surface which is why the reminder we are just 1% on the Robin Hood story was a personal wakeup call for my co-founder arand and me we realized that the world is not merely revolve around our professional careers and our startups blah blah blah and there's no point in having like a great Network and degrees unless we use that to at least attempt to make a difference to sum this up in one word purpose purpose is something which is not restricted to your family your loved ones or your software career we can be as ambitious about things which we see around us that need to be fixed one out of seven people in this map are going to sleep hungry tonight the Robin Hood Army's purpose is to change that significantly to do that we need to think less and do more we're just 1% done thank you thank you thank you