LONDON: SIMPLE cheer was brought to homeless people living on the streets here with a meal of Malaysian chicken rice during the Christmas holiday over the weekend.
The free meals, courtesy of Malaysian cafe owners Noor Azlina Zainal Abidin and Grenville Peter Mills, were personally delivered by the couple along with their 7-year-old son Ismael, during the holiday.
“It was not difficult to find them. They were sheltering in doorways, cold and hungry,” said Azlina of Cafe Rasa Malaysia at the Westfield Shopping Centre in Stratford, East London.
“We drove around from Stratford station to Trafalgar Square. It is sad to see people in that situation,” she said.
“Homeless people are normally found in the area where similarly concerned charity groups would do their rounds to feed them.
According to United Kingdom’s government figures, the number of homeless and destitute people in the country has risen. The estimates put the figures at over 3,500 people sleeping in the streets each night last year, an increase of 30 per cent compared with 2014.
Centrepoint, a charity organisation, had reported that 25,000 young people were at risk of homelessness during the festive season. The young ones tend to converge here, where they thought a better future awaits them.
During the festive season, many charity organisations such as Muslim Aid, have gone all out with food parcels and blankets to their make life more bearable, especially when the temperatures dipped to freezing level.
“We had always wanted to open a soup kitchen to feed the needy,” said Mills, who together with Azlina, started their catering and food business in 2011.
Driving each day to their cafe, they could see the homeless huddled together for comfort and warmth in the doorways of office buildings and shops.
“I don’t think the shopping complex where we operate our cafe would allow us to provide food for the homeless within its premises. So, we decided to go out and find them (the homeless),” Mills said.
Azlina had prepared the meals on Christmas Day as their cafe was closed for business on that day.
“I made barbecued chicken rice. The packets were taken up in no time,” she said, adding that she felt upset that some people had to go through such hardship despite this day and age.
“I made 30 packets. Next year, we will be better organised and will make more,” she said, adding that they might do it monthly.
“I wished a young man ‘Merry Christmas’ and immediately realised it would probably have no meaning for him. I saw another young man too weak to lift his arm to take the food. He is out in the cold and his health was deteriorating,” said Mills.
After handing over some food packets there, they proceeded to Trafalgar Square. Charity organisations could be seen feeding the homeless around Charing Cross.
Azlina, 43, who hailed from Bukit Mertajam, came here in 2006.
Her passion for cooking made her venture into catering and opened her first cafe, Lemon Grass, in 2011.
Cafe Rasa Malaysia, which provides Malaysian meals, was opened in 2012. The cafe has participated in Malaysian food festivals at the Trafalgar Square as well as Southbank. As a result of their the couple’s trip to feed the homeless, they have received much support from like-minded friends who offered to join in their generous venture for the homeless and needy.