Meals on wheels - reflections

It was a great experience in stepping up meals on wheels.

I got inspired from the idea of circles from mumbai meals on wheels and we thought that we could have a lose structure around meals on wheels.

Opening circle : Typically with a short inspiring story and a seed question.
Activity circle : Cutting-chopping, Cooking, Cleaning up
Circle of Connection : Moving out on street with food, sitting with strangers and having our dinner while connecting through stories, games, light hearted chats
Reflection Circle : Volunteers coming back and sharing their reflections and ‘aha’ moments

*Opening circle (begins with 10 minutes of silence and closes with 2 minutes of silence) *
With all the old volunteers coming together, and this was the first time where we wanted to talk about new processes we opened the circle with a specific question “How was our journey with meals on wheels and What keeps us all bringing here again and again?” The question fitted right to understand everyone’s journey and pit stop point.

In the reflections, what commonly stood out was that, We are super local, we don’t want to scale up, we are not doing this for external appreciation and the fact that we never felt like clicking photos says that. The idea of connecting with people while serving (rather than simply moving ahead after serving) resonated well with all of us.

Activity circle
We then had teams to do cutting-chopping, cooking, cleaning. While the cooking team was cooking, we played transformational songs, the others held questions like: What does everyone feel about the new process? how can we creatively manage our time constraints? What more can we do to be more present in the moment with more silence while we are cooking, so that, with new volunteers coming in, we hold the energy of the space right? We are still holding a few of these questions.

Circle of Connection
We went on streets with food to a particular area and found a community of rag-pickers, we asked them if were hungry, they said even if we had our dinner, we are still hungry, we served the whole community there. since a lot of the community people present were old and kids and mothers taking care of kids, most of them were inside, we asked a few other people in the community if we could have dinner with them, they allowed us to do that, we then sat on the footpath in a big circle, playing games, asking everyone how their day was, the dinner was done as everyone shared, we all then got up with smiles, joy and sense of connect within us. A grandma, after being served, thanked us and blessed us with sort of teary eyes. And I wondered who received?

It was beautiful experience, we then get up from the circle only to be greeted by an on looker, a 18-20 yr old kid who was watching this since last 15-20 mins, came to us and said ‘I want to join you guys, I love what you all are doing’, this guy stays in pune and was there just for sometime and was waiting for a bus back home. He sees us, comes to us and was literally shivering with joy, we asked him what do you liked about here? He said “the fact that you sat together and spent time is what I loved the most, I want to join you all and experience this” He went on to say “If you guys do it on a saturday, I will take a half day off and will join you guys, I just want to come”. We hugged him tight, while he was taking one of our volunteer’s number, we saw that his hands were still shivering. I don’t know how to acknowledge his spontaneity and courage. I then felt, may be he is moved by love :) He will join us next week :)

Reflection Circle
Everyone was beaming and overflowing with joy once they came back. Everyone shared how moved they were and would do every meals on wheels in this format. One of the mindful volunteers also had a right suggestion to be mindful of questions we ask to people and be mindful that we don’t hurt anyone’s feeling in the process, everyone acknowledged this mindfulness. Everyone was joyful about the experience and with the spontaneity of the newest volunteer in the group :)

I think this loose structured process sounds great for now, and we would need to tweak in a little in the activity circle, I’m holding a few of those questions and keeping space for emergence.

I deeply thank all the volunteers, people on the streets, my inspirations for this experience.

P.S : Longer version with specific reflections could be found here