HACSI Celebrated the momentous occasion of having cooked ONE MILLION Meals at DC Central Kitchen with a gala event on Saturday, November 11th 2017 at Sri Siva Vishnu Temple in Lanham, MD. At this event, HACSI honored all the volunteers and partner organizations in the Metro DC area that helped HACSI achieve this significant milestone. This event was well attended by patrons and well wishers of HACSI.

HACSI’s food for the needy program had its origins in 2007 when a group of volunteers from Sri Siva Vishnu Temple went over to Dc Central Kitchen(DCCK) which operates from the Nations’s largest shelter for the homeless. The volunteers would prepare a day’s requirement of 4500 meals, half of which would be consumed in the shelter itself, and the remaining distributed in various shelters in the Washington Metropolitan region. Touched by this experience , our volunteers resolved to continue this activity; and to expand it because of increase in the number of homeless caused by the economic downturn starting from 2007-08. To facilitate this, informal networks of individuals and organizations in the Hindu/Jain community emerge; and HACSI was the natural outgrowth to ensure a more organized and systematic approach to planning and executing this activity. HACSI was incorporated in 2009.

Since than HACSI has been working with DCCK to determine the dates of the community’s participation for the ensuing year, and negotiating with some two dozen Hindy/Jain organizations (such as temples, cultural and social associations and in rare cases business entities) to determine their engagement for a particular date. As and when needed, HACSI provides supplementary financial and support. In recent years, our community provides 5000 meals a day on 24 days a year or some 120,000 meals annually, accounting for six percent of the 1.86 million meals cooked in DCCK. The cumulative total of meals cooked by volunteers of HACSI and its two dozen affiliates in the 2007-2017 period crossed one Million!!

The event was well attended by hundreds of volunteers, donors and well-wishers of HACSI. HACSI honored all the volunteers and donors on that day.