Lions Club offers cheap meals

JAKARTA (JP): Lions Club Indonesia plans to continue selling cheap meals to needy people in West Jakarta streets for the next few months.

The coordinator of the charity work, Budiman of the Lions Club Jakarta Nusantara, said Saturday the scheme, launched in the middle of last month, was purely meant to help poor people, who have been badly hit by the crisis.

Therefore, he said, "this project will continue for two or three more months."

According to Lions Club Indonesia president Kornel Karwenda, the project was first started with the Rp 2.1 million (US$162) worth of assistance from the Ministry of Social Services and donations from club members and other individuals of Rp 850,000 and 200 kilograms of rice.

"Each meal package we made could not meet the price of Rp 1,000 as was suggested by the ministry. In order to meet the standard minimum nutrition level, we had to spend Rp 1,750 on each package and sell them for Rp 500 each," Karwenda said.

"Because the economic status of our consumers is so low, we sometimes had to sell the meals for less than Rp 500 each. Occasionally, we also distributed the food for free," he was quoted by Antara as saying.

The target of the Lions Club's project includes small-scale food vendors, beggars, scavengers, homeless people and ojek (motorcycle taxi) drivers in and around Jembatan Besi, Jl. Hayam Wuruk, Grogol bus terminal, Tomang and Grogol intersection.

Budiman said his team sold 1,650 meal packages every six days, in which time they collected Rp 746,000 to keep their business afloat. (bsr)