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Sharing meals with Jakarta mosques: Feed the poor, save the earth and (maybe) get a blessing
With big restaurants and hotels having a strict policy of not storing food they are unable to sell at the end of each business day, mosques in Jakarta have begun an initiative to collect the food and distribute it to the poor.
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People break their fast at Burj Al Bakrie Mosque in Kuningan, South Jakarta. The mosque is the first to implement a green iftar program during the Ramadan fasting month, in which single-use food containers are not used to reduce waste. (JP/Wendra Ajistyatama )
F
or 50-year-old Sunarto, Friday is the day of the week he looks forward to most. Every Friday he receives the one decent meal of the week from Burj Al Bakrie Mosque in South Jakarta. For much of the past four months, the meals have consisted of ether rice with rendang (beef curry) or chicken in soy sauce.
The man, who makes ends meet by taking on odd jobs, says his everyday meals usually consist of just rice and tempeh. “That’s the only thing you can buy with Rp 7,000 (50 US cents),” he said.
“Chicken is a real treat, and it’s free. I’m happy, finally I get variation in what I eat.”
The mosque, adjacent to the Bakrie Tower and Epicentrum shopping area in Kuningan, distributes meals under its Beramal program, which is short for berbagi makanan lebih (sharing surplus food) collected from restaurants in the area.
This is part of a growing nationwide movement called Jumat Barokah (Blessed Friday) whereby mosques give out food to the needy in their neighborhood after Friday prayers. The difference is that while the majority of mosques rely on the generosity of donors to finance their programs, Beramal encourages mosques to collect surplus food from nearby restaurants.
With big restaurants and hotels have a strict policy of not storing food they are unable sell at the end of each business day, the amount of food waste is staggering. Rather than throwing it out, they can give it to the poor, if someone is willing to collect the food. Enter Beramal.
Jakarta, with its population of 10.5 million doubling during the day when people commuting into town for work, , produces about 4,000 tons of food waste every day, according to the Jakarta Environmental Agency. This includes surplus and leftover food from homes, restaurants and hotels. With Jakarta struggling to find landfills large enough to accommodate so much daily trash, the city is trying to cut down on waste, including food waste.
