People line up with their containers to receive prasadam

Prepared for the Hungarian palate, the prasadam includes bean and lentil soups, vegetable dishes made with cabbage, carrot, potatoes and spinach, bread, fruit and yoghurt. A favorite—particularly with school children—is cabbage in tomato sauce, a typical Hungarian dish.

The new government-owned facility for Food for Life in the 7th district is only a distribution center, not a kitchen, so devotees cook at a huge kitchen at the Budapest temple.

Every morning, they prepare about five hundred liters of prasadam, which they transfer to stainless steel food containers that keep it hot. At 11am, two vans leave to distribute the food: one goes to two locations in the 3rd district, while the other goes to the 7th district and then downtown. Altogether, 1,500 plates of food are distributed from Monday to Friday.

During Christmas time, devotees serve not only hot meals but also support-packs of long-lasting foods such as flour, oil, pasta, canned corn, and sugar.

The staff include twelve initiated devotees, and three needy people who came for food every day and then began giving back by helping with the project. A further ten to fifteen volunteers help during the actual distribution of the food.

“The project involves many volunteers who come from different platforms of society,” says Gandharvika Prema. “Here they work hand in hand for a noble goal. They become very caring for other people and are freed from stereotypes about the needy.”

The program also creates a good social caring network for the needy themselves. Every day, people meet at the new humanitarian charity center where the prasadam is distributed, connect with each other, form friendships and help each other in different ways, such as by taking food to those who are sick.

Gandharvika Prema calls the program a sustainable eco-system that turns a supported person into a self-supporter.

“Most people are very appreciative of it,” she says. “For some, it helps them really integrate into the society, find a job and so on. And old people like us because they get so much love, care and attention from us.”

Food for Life have countless examples of grateful “customers.”

Volunteers serve prasadam

For one elderly man, whose pension is so small it barely pays for anything, Food for Life provide his only meals—he eats nothing but prasadam.

One eighty-four-year-old lady can hardly walk, but she still comes down the hill from her house to eat Food for Life every day.

“When she gets sick, we usually turn into meals-on-wheels and take the food to her home,” says Gandharvika Prema. “She just loves us!”

Some people go through extraordinary transformations through eating prasadam.

“One old lady would come every day, for over two years, to help help in our food distribution,” Gandharvika Prema recalls. “She started to chant and read the Bhagavad-gita. Then one day, she stumbled and fell, and couldn’t walk anymore. She was just lying in bed, chanting and waiting for death. She had a small plaster statue of Krishna next to her bed, and she said: ‘He is so cute, so beautiful. I just love Him.’ Before dying she instructed her daughter: ‘Continue what I started by going to the food distribution every day, and give love to God.’”

Motivated by how much their work helps people, Food for Life Budapest plan to contact other municipalities in the future and to expand their efforts further.

It’s a noble endeavor that will no doubt be blessed by the Lord.

“I felt inspired to thank you for your services in FFL and also thank the other devotees involved,” ISKCON’s GBC for Hungary, Sivarama Swami, recently wrote to Gandharvika Prema. “You should know how important this work of feeding our countrymen is and will be as the economic situation worsens. Please continue this service and expand it as you can. No doubt Krishna will help you and also bless you.”

Tag: budapest , food-for-life , hungary