This Diwali, 93.5 Red FM along with Feeding India, an NGO that works on solutions for the issues of hunger, malnutrition and food wastage in India, have joined hands to ensure – ‘Iss Diwali No Paet Khaali’.

Under this campaign, Red FM will ask its listeners to nominate their localities to host Happy Fridges while Feeding India will bring the listeners ask to life by setting up these community fridges free of cost. With Red FM’s campaign and listeners, they are looking to expand to every corner of our country with the joint aim of eliminating food wastage and hunger.

In the recent Global Hunger Index 2019, India scored 102 out of 117 countries. Here countries were ranked on a 100-point "severity scale", where zero is the best score (no hunger) and 100 is the worst. Food wastage is an alarming issue all over the world and one that needs immediate action. Recent facts indicate that despite 4.5% growth in GDP and availability of surplus food, 50% of India’s 1.3 billion population is still hungry. Moreover, according to the United Nations Development Programme, up to 40% of food produced in India is wasted. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, close to INR 50,000 crores worth of food produced is wasted every year in the country.

Srishti Jain, Co-founder - Feeding India said, “We set up free fridges in residential and commercial complexes to facilitate communities in providing immediate, anonymous and dignified access to food, to those in desperate need. Residents/citizens with excess food can donate food, and people who need food can thus, take it from the fridge. Each fridge serves between 1500 - 2000 meals a month. We’re glad to have RED FM’s support as an awareness partner and look forward to more communities coming forward to get involved in taking care of their own.”

The campaign will run in two phases from 10^th October to 25^th October: across 21 cities – Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Chandigarh, Amritsar, Jodhpur, Jaipur, Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Bhubaneswar, Siliguri, Jamshedpur, Patna, Dehradun, Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Nasik, Aurangabad, Bhopal and Indore.

This Diwali, with Red FM and Feeding India’s ‘No PaetKhaali’ campaign, let’s pledge to minimize food wastage.