One man’s efforts to help people in south Tehran has quickly galvanised an army of volunteers around the country

Ali Heidari got in the car with his wife and nine-year-old son and drove to the Harandi neighbourhood in south Tehran, one of the main concentrations for homeless people in the Iranian capital. They were carrying 15 meals for the homeless. When they got there, Heidari was struck by what he saw.

“I couldn’t bear the disaster,” he says. “I walked to two people to put a food container next to them just to realise they were dead. I saw them dead with my own two eyes.”

After that incident Heidari went to his neighbours and friends asking for food for homeless people. “I told them, ‘In south Tehran some people are starving to death. Please help them. Give whatever you can. Even five small cheese sandwiches will do’. I told them I could come and collect the food and distribute it myself.”

That was almost six months ago, in May. Now it is not only Heidari and his family. Thousands of volunteers all over Iran are helping to eliminate homelessness through a group called Payane Kartonkhabi, ending homelessness, or more literally, ‘ending sleeping in cardboard boxes’.

The group not only distributes food among the homeless but also installs fridges on the street so that the neighbours can leave homemade meals for those in need.

It all started when Heidari, a manager at an advertising company in Tehran, decided to go beyond his family and friends and contribute to a wider community. “I had just turned 40. Maybe it was the mid-life crisis kicking in. I felt I need to repay my debt to society. I decided to help the deprived and forgotten. In search for the most suitable community to focus on, I was led to the homeless.”

There is little information about the homeless in Iran. Iranian officials say there are around 15,000 homeless people in Tehran and its suburbs, including 5,000 women. However Heidari believes the number of homeless people is at least twice that figure.

In Tehran, the homeless are mostly concentrated in the Imamzade Abdollah neighbourhood in west Tehran, Shoush and Harandi, and parts of Azadegan Expressway in south Tehran. Among them all, Harandi and Shoush are the main centres for women and children.

According to Heidari, the homeless in Tehran range in age from a 40-day-old infant to 80-year-old men and women. And they come from different backgrounds. “We have a former university professor, a published poet, a barber and a former athlete among our homeless community,” he says.

More than ten official organisations receive government funding to tackle homelessness, including the Tehran Municipality, the Welfare Organisation, and Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. But there is no transparency as to what each organisation does. Every now and then an official complains about the failure of those charged with helping the homelessness or asks the relevant organisations to take action.

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“No one wants to take real responsibility for homeless people,” says Heidari. “The police say it’s the municipality’s responsibility, the municipality passes the responsibility to the Welfare Organisation and they say the Interior Ministry should deal with them.”

There is no overall state plan for dealing with homelessness, and the homeless have no specific legal rights. As most homeless people are addicted to some kind of drugs, Iran simply applies laws and policies on drug addiction, meaning homeless addicts have the same rights as other addicts to be treated at a drug treatment centre.

With all these complications making it difficult to officially address homelessness, Heidari decided to act. “The most necessary thing is nutrition,” says Heidari. “If a homeless person is well fed, he or she won’t so easily collapse and die.”

After going to friends and relatives, he used social media to ask for help. On a Wednesday in July, the first group of volunteers went to south Tehran and distributed food. This is now regular. Every Wednesday, at 10pm, volunteers take thousands of food portions to Shoush neighbourhood. “Our record is 5,000 meals in one night,” says Heidari.

The group has not yet been registered as an NGO, which is a time-consuming process. But even without registration Payane Kartonkhabi is active in more than 20 cities including Tabriz, Isfahan, Kermanshah, Arak, and Shiraz, thanks to Instagram, Facebook and mostly Telegram. “It’s through Telegram that we are able to expand our activities to other cities,” says Heidari. “As soon as at least three people from one city announce their willingness to cooperate, we create a specific Telegram page for that city and they start their activities.”

The installing of fridges began in October. The idea is simple: those who can afford it will put food in the fridge, and anyone who’s hungry, be it a homeless person or a neighbour, can open the fridge and take something to eat.

After getting the approval from the municipality, the first fridge was installed in Shoush neighbourhood. “At the beginning some were pessimistic,” recalls Heidari. “Shoush is known for theft, so some were saying that in less than 24 hours every part of the fridge would be stolen. Some were also saying, one person might come and take all the food and leave nothing for others. None of this has happened up until now.”

Soon other fridges will be installed in other parts of Tehran. And the idea is spreading. The northern cities of Karaj, Rasht and Lahijan have already installed one fridge each and two fridges are on the way in Isfahan.

Heidari says this idea will go beyond only feeding those who are hungry. “With the help of some volunteer builders we are building cottage-like frames and in it we will not only have a fridge but also a closet where people can put their spare clothes. We are also going to have a small bookshelf for donated books, and finally a small cabinet where kids can leave their extra toys for others.”

In addition to that, the group also helps fight addiction among the homeless, taking an approach different from the official organisations.

The authorities mainly emphasise forced treatment. In September, Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf admitted that drug policy, including access to treatment centres was not effective, and needed to be more voluntary and place greater responsibility on the addicts themselves.

Ali Heidari agrees. “We at Payane Kartonkhabi have a rule: no one has the right to ask a homeless addict to quit. If they were going to listen, they would have listened to their loved ones and quit. Without mentioning anything about addiction we just love them unconditionally. We hug them and are not scared of them. And believe it or not, now without us opening our mouth, the addicts come to us and ask us to help them quit.”

Every week the group sends dozens of addicts to private treatment centres and covers their expenses through donations. Heidari says recently the municipality has told them that it will cover the costs.

Payane Kartonkhoabi’s goal is to put an end to homelessness in Iran. It holds training workshops for those who are drug-free and tries to find jobs for them.

“We are not doing anything special. We are just paying our debt to society,” says Heidari. “If we have homeless people in Iran, it’s because at one point we were not caring enough toward our people. So now we are trying to compensate. We are trying to rebuild the trust between us and the homeless people who for so long saw us as their enemies. It’s through the trust that we are trying to tackle homelessness. Now, if there is a new homeless person in the area, other homeless people call us and ask us to come and save the person before it’s too late.”

The Tehran Bureau is an independent media organisation, hosted by the Guardian. Contact us @tehranbureau