Help has poured in for the flood-hit Kerala from all sides and a group of women who lived in Switzerland wanted to play their part as well. So a group of 16 women, all living in the Swiss city of Baden, came together and worked for three days to raise Rs 1.8 lakh for Kerala flood relief. They did this by selling lunch boxes containing Indian food.
It was Linija who sent a message to her neighbour Bandana Maheshwari (34), asking her if they can come together to run a food stall to raise money for Kerala. After checking with their networks, Linija and Bandana were able to find 14 other women who were interested in the initiative as the project required some investment. They popularised their plan through social media and soon set themselves to action.
Soon it all started, two locations were decided where some women would cook the vegetarian and non-vegetarian food respectively. Some women packed lunch boxes, and three women who had cars were responsible for delivery. The responsibilities would rotate over the three days, depending on who was free when. Shinta Simon, co-founder of the Namaste Switzerland magazine, was also part of the initiative. She is originally from Kerala and brought up in Goa.
The women sold 150 lunch boxes in three days. “We didn’t sleep, we didn’t talk to our families, we were just so invested in this for those three days,” Bandana says. Apart from Bandana and Shinta, the other women who made this possible were Anjana Bonthala, Linija Kalloopparambil, Kirti Sharma, Lirin Francis, Manasa Mukka, Preeti Goyal, Preeti Khandelwal, Purnima Menon, Ramarathna BC, Ramya Vinoth, Sandhya John, Shikha Kedia, Swetha Pola and Sonika Jhalani.
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