When the bitter realities of Coronavirus upended life last March, the need to ensure nobody went hungry was brought into sharp focus. Fortunately, volunteer food relief charity Food For All has been addressing that need daily for the last 30 years.
Based around the Hare Krishna spiritual practice of prasadam, or simply offering hot meals for free to anyone who wants them, the charity’s cheery distribution vans are a familiar sight across Camden, providing a lifeline to the homeless and those suffering mental health issues.
Their mission is equally rooted in environmentalism and activism too, helping divert huge volumes of edible food that would otherwise by consigned to landfill into hungry bellies instead. With lockdown shuttering the entire catering industry, from hotels and restaurants to school canteens and high street sandwich bars, the mounting food waste issue was potentially as devastating as the perverse accompanying hunger. Luckily, Food For All were able to bring years of knowledge to this parallel crisis too, and have introduced thousands more locals to the joyful positive impact of their work in the process.
