Does your neighbour love your dal makhani or do your children swear by your custard? Wouldn’t it be great if you could transform your culinary skills into something that serves the community as a whole? The newly-opened Seva Cafe in Pune offers you just that — a great platform to show off the chef in you while doing your bit for charity.
While the basic administration work for the organisation is based in Pune, they are on the look out for volunteers from other cities also who can cook, serve, wait upon diners and also do the basic kitchen work.
Sheetal Vaidya Trivedi, a volunteer with the Cafesays, “Based on the Gandhian principles, the Pune-based Seva Cafefollows in the steps of its earlier ones established in California and Ahmedabad. Dining at the Cafe on a scrumptious vegetarian fare is absolutely free.” At the end of your meal, you will be presented with an empty envelope in which you can put in any amount of money to pay in advance for the diner after you.
Sheetal explains, “No one takes home any money. It is charity that goes round in a circle.”
It was their volunteering work at the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad that nudged Shetal Vaidya and her associate Sheetal Sanghvi, who runs the Urban Ashram in Pune to start a project in their own city for charity.
Sheetal points out, “There are several projects at the Gandhi Ashram that work towards empowering women, giving sources of employment to women and also teaching them weaving and artistic techniques. The profits that we make at the Cafe are entirely donated to charity.”
The volunteers even let go off diners who neither want to pay for themselves or pay for the next diner. Sheetal justifies, “It is about good will. If we don’t collect enough money to match our expenditure, we dig into our own pockets.”
But if there are profits, the volunteers send it to Emanuel Public School in Pune that teaches street kids. Sheetal informs that the school that is not funded by any agency buys stationary and food for the students with the collected proceeds.
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