The Picha Project: Homecooking by Refugees in Kuala Lumpur
We just had a Remote Year community connect lunch catered by the Picha Project, which was started about 6 months ago here in KL by some volunteers who wanted to help contribute to the refugee crisis.
According to their presentation, there are about 65 million refugees worldwide and about 150,000 in KL (a lot from Myanmar, but also Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and other countries). Only 5% of refugees worldwide will be resettled, which means getting citizenship in another country.
This group of young people was working at a school and started noticing that they were losing students because their families couldn’t afford to keep them in school.
So they started with one family — helping the mother of a boy named Picha earn money by selling her homemade food.
They now have 8 families affiliated with their organization, and the families cook food from their home countries. They provide catering and food delivery services (minimum of 5 orders), which have to be ordered at least 2 days in advance.
Zaza’s family catered our lunch today with delicious Syrian food: lamb lasagna, Kibbeh (fried lamb balls), pita and hummus, and a coconut dessert.
During Ramadan last year, Zaza’s family was offered some money by a kind-hearted Malaysian as his family was struggling financially. However, instead of receiving the money, Zaza broke down in tears and turned down the offer as he came from a culture which believes that money should be earned with hard work.
– Zaza’s Family, The Picha Project blog
Two representative volunteers from Picha presented information about their mission and how they work with their families and customers. Sales means money for families who usually can’t otherwise work here — they aim to get enough sales so that each family earns $250 USD per month.
This work also provides the cooks with a positive purpose in their daily life. In their presentation, they told us that it already noticeably helped some of their cooks deal with their PTSD.
The Picha Project is run by three young local women. They are volunteers and asked us to help spread the word about their organization and encourage locals and businesses here in KL to order from them!
Katherine is a digital nomad, working remotely while she travels the world — on the road since June 2014. She’s a member of Remote Year 2 Battuta, living around the world with 75 other digital nomads from February 2016 to January 2017.
Please click the ❤ below to recommend this essay :) Thank you!
Questions + feedback welcome in the comments.
Want more? Sign up for my mailing list, and follow along here on Medium,Facebook, and Instagram.
