He is one of the young leaders who were selected by U.N. from more than 18,000 nominations from 186 countries.

Troubled to see the amount of food being wasted in the big, fat Indian weddings, management graduate Ankit Kawatra came up with the solution to redistribute it among the hungry.

Mr. Kawatra, who left his corporate job to start ‘Feeding India’, is among the 17 people selected for the inaugural class of U.N. Young Leaders for Sustainable Development Goals for his initiative.

The young leaders were selected by the U.N. from more than 18,000 nominations from 186 countries.

“I worked in a global business advisory firm for two years. One day, I went to a celebrity wedding where there were around 10,000 people invited for the wedding and more than 35 cuisines were laid for them. I decided to stay back to see what happened with the food. To my shock and despair, heaps of leftover food was thrown straight into the bin which could have fed 5,000 people just that single night,” Mr. Kawatra said.

This led him to establish his own NGO, Feeding India, which now claims to have fed 1 million meals with a network of 2,000 volunteers across 28 cities of India.

Redistribution of food

They work towards solving hunger and malnutrition in India by redistributing excess food from weddings, corporate, canteens, banquets and households.

As part of the initiative, Mr. Kawatra has undertaken several projects in the past two years. These include ‘The Magic Truck’, a 24X7 refrigerated vehicle moving around the city collecting and donating excess food.

“We have adopted many donation centres, self-run schools and shelter homes for children, elderly and specially-abled. We provide them with nutritious and well balanced meals,” he said. — PTI