ThaiHarvest-SOS, one of the busiest new charities in the city, installed their second community fridge at River City shopping center today.
The group aims to divert surplus food from some of Bangkok’s great restaurants to the people who need it most.
They installed Bangkok’s first community fridge a few months ago at upscale mall The Commons, in Thong Lor, where they have been collecting and distributing quality, leftover food donated by the complex’s tenants several times per week.
The food is picked up in their truck and delivered to groups like the Vietnamese and Cambodian asylum-seekers living in Nonthaburi who can not legally work in Thailand.
READ: Feeding the hungry: Bangkok’s First Community Fridge distributes meals to needy
Though ThaiHarvest-SOS launched just over a year ago, they have already done a world of good. They got their first cooler truck and began edible pick ups 10 months ago. Their inaugural community fridge has redistributed more than 1,000 kilograms of food in that time, creating more than 3,000 meals. Now, with the second fridge, they can easily double that number.
Foundation Chief Operations Officer Abigail Smith said, “We deliver food almost daily to various refugee communities in Bangkok. There are 8,000 refugees and, of those, 4,000 are recognized. Of those 4,000, just 5 percent receive government funding. We do what we can to offset health and education costs for them by regularly delivering food,” she said.
“We’re even able to pair up meals with different communities. For example, the Pakistani refugees didn’t want baguettes. But we had this huge surplus of baguettes daily, when we realized that the Vietnamese communities really love them! It’s been quite the learning experience for us, and we’ve been conversing with the communities and trying to figure out what works best for them,” said Smith.
The restaurants and food-sellers that have pledged to put their extra food in the new community fridge are: Viva & Aviv The River, Supanniga Cruise, Wan Fah Dinner Cruise, White Orchid Dinner Cruise, La Grande Perle, Tops Daily, Water Grill, Tom n Toms Coffee, Black Canyon Coffee, Coffee Club, Subway, and River View Coffeeshop.
Delivering food is far from the only thing the foundation does though. Executive Assistant Darra Christensen explained one of their other initiatives, “We’re implementing a new nourishment education program. A lot of the refugees aren’t familiar with vegetables and herbs native to Thailand so they sometimes stick to unhealthy options that they find more convenient. What we do is hold workshops with them and help familiarize them with fruits and vegetables that they can prepare to cater to their tastes.”
If you’d like to help out and meet the ThaiHarvest-SOS team in person, they are hosting a fundraiser, called UglyFruit, on Sept. 29 at Silom’s Whiteline.
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