We are standing up against the situation! We started collecting vitamins to provide to those who are most affected by coronavirus. 

We deliver the donations of vitamin to elderly care, homeless care, and to residential care facilities where the majority of the residents or patients are seniors and/or have a weakened immune system.

We have set up an event tent in the parking lot of the Tablas Temporary Shelter and Day Center which serves as a donation center. The tent has a roof which ensures that neither our volunteers nor the donors need to be in a closed space, yet the donations are safe. 

3500 HUF covers the vitamin supply for 100 people for a day. Could you please help? 

What we need: multivitamin, soap, paper
Donate using your credit/debit card or via bank transfer, please add the reference VitaminBoom

The end date for the campaign is not yet set. In our Facebook-event we are continuously communicating results and news. Should we receive a significant donation, we will include more and more institutions. 

Thank you for thinking of others, even during the crisis!

Update: 17 March, Tuesday, 08:02AM

You have donated 511,000 HUF so far, to which we added 200,000 HUF. It totals 711,000 HUF! Special thanks to Scitec, as they helped us send 6,500 portions of vitamin to the elderly care. 

On December 10, Day of Human Rights70th anniversary of the European Council, we made a call out to hundreds of donors and volunteers as part of an all-day-long, enormous collaboration in order to ensure dinner for four thousand people, because the right to food and healthy meals is a basic human right, and in Winter, a lot of people can’t get a nourishing meal. We plan to repeat this operation on a yearly basis, with the hope of more and more people joining the initiative from year to year.

During our effort in collaboration with the embassies of the Netherlands and Sweden, in a single day, we collected, made and delivered copious amounts of food – sandwiches, fruit, tea, desserts, chocolate, vitamins and sustainable food – to shelters for the homeless and to people living in the streets.

In the dinner of four thousand people, not only those people in need who live in Budapest could take part, but also those living in other towns, thanks to Debrecen Bike Maffia, Szeged Bike Maffia and Pécs Bike Maffia, who also joined the initiative.

Besides private persons, companies and NGO’s also participated in the sandwich-making, the donation and the food delivery. We thank the following organizations:

Adománytaxi, Celanese, Centropa Alapítvány, Danone, Decathlon, Erste Bank, Haver Informális Zsidó Oktatási Alapítvány, IKEA, JDC Magyarország, Libri Kiadó, Limmud Magyarország, Process Solution, Rexfilm, Talmud nem csak Nőknek, TARBUT, Teleki Téri Imaház/zsinagóga és a Budapest Bike Maffia +1 Szendvics programjában résztvevő iskolák

Results of the day in pictures and numbers:
– 4329 sandwiches
– 7169 portions of fruit
– 7378 portions of vitamin preparations
– 7169 portions of chocolate, desserts along with 30 kg’s of small cakes and wafers or other sweets
– 246 boxes (4920 filters) of tea

The initiative made it to tha pages of The New York Times and Reuters, too.

We recently surprised the inhabitants of the Aszód street shelter together with the team of Food Angels Hungary. The Low Cost Wellness and Shopping Mall was our first project, with which we intended to develop a closer relationship with a social services organisation. This way the people we reach get a glimpse into the way the institutions work and into the shelter’s residents’ life  thanks to improved communication.

(Bocsi, de ezt magyarul sem nagyon értem, hogy pontosan mire vonatkozik) This experience can change the negative perception of homlessness in a profound way.

Last but not least, should we say first and foremost we had created a very positive experience for those who are forced to live in the homeless shelters meanwhile also lending a helping hand for the people who work there, because mostly they don’t have time to facilitate such programs.

The residents could choose clothes, shoes, toiletries, towels and bedding for themselves in exchange of “happiness points”; hairdressers styled them and they could participate in health screenings all day.

While they were browsing, potato and paprika stew was cooking in the cauldron of the Bike Maffia prepared under the guidance of Simon Szabó film director. The main meal was followed by rice pudding and coffee.

A big shout out to the hairdressers of Wood Hair for styling 50 people, to the Generali Providencia Foundation, to the ICSR Nonprofit Kft for the health screening bus, to the team of Gasztro Premium Kft for the 250 food packages, to the Kiosk Restaurant for the 250 portions of rice pudding, to the Adina Apartment Hotels for the beddings, toiletries, kitchen accessories and towels, to Caffe Perte for the 150 coffees, to Mova Kft and Four Seasons Hotel Gresham Palace and to Andó and Zsófi for the ingredients of the main course. Special thanks for our friends for clothing and our volunteers for their work.

The crew of Index made a video of the event:

“All for one” – one little act of charity, more than fifty drummers, carnival vibes

We asked everyone to take a coin of 100 forints with them to this event. No, they were not for the admission fee, but for donation – someone in need got all the coins at the end of the party. We asked participants to bring on kind words in addition to the coins, since those often matter just as much as financial support.

We met up at Műegyetem Rakpart, from where we headed out for the “party of hundreds” with drummers in festive spirits. During our walk we were looking for a person who would get all the coins. We ended up on Liberty Bridge where we surprised a fellow human who had to permanently live on the streets. More than a hundred people went up to them with money and kind words. As we have mentioned, it wasn’t all about the money, emotional support was just as important so that we could give someone hope and an opportunity to see the future in a better light.

Watch the video RTL Klub shot at the “Party of hundreds”!

Who helped us to create good vibes? It was the Bateria Girassol, who are the first bateria in Hungary playing samba from Rio de Janeiro. We would like to thank them for joining us with drummers from three neighbouring countries. Drummers from Croatia, Serbia, Austria and Hungary as part of the Bloco Coração! crew helped us to party and make the day nicer for someone in need at the same time.

Torkos Csütörtök takes place in February, where many of us visit restaurants in the hope of finding new flavours and places to eat. Due to the fact that we can try various meals on half of their price we try places which are ordinarily fall into the luxurious category.
However, there are people who do not have the opportunity to eat in restaurants, not only on this special day, but maybe never. Unless we do something about it…

That is why we, at the Budapest Bike Maffia, had a thought and surprised the tenants at the Aszódi Street homeless shelter. We have provided more than 300 portions of the „classical” Sunday lunch menu.
Well, it is true that we did this on Thursday and not on Sunday and it wasn’t lunch but dinner, but this does not change the essence of the idea. The menu was: broth, schnitzel, mashed potatoes with nutmeg, homemade pickles and some dessert. Why did we choose this menu? Because this is the meal that brings back childhood memories, homely moments, or if someone did not experience these even in his childhood, he might have a chance to take part in it now.

We have repeated this initiative and in that case we have personally served the festive menu to the tenants of the Táblás Street temporary hostel. To make the atmosphere even more similar to a restaurant we have played some music as well.

Do you want to know how it went? Check out our video!

The Szimpla Kert and the Élesztő helped us to organize these events.

„Let’s not celebrate and help them on Women’s Day only!” – collection of donations for homeless women

Homeless women are often more dependent and vulnerable than men. It is very important for their self-esteem to preserve a well-kept appearance and their femininity, while beauty products, or sometimes even hygienic products are a luxury for them, as it is an additional cost.

Budapest Bike Maffia organises a collection of donations for homeless women every year around 8th March, Women’s Day. It is important to take care of them not only on this day but throughout the year! Beyond collecting donations, our campaign Long live the girls! also aims to raise awareness about this.

During this campaign, we pay attention to their needs and collect everyday products (shower gel, shampoo, body lotion, deodorant, women’s razor, nail polish, lipstick, hair dye) at different locations in Budapest (cafés, pubs and clubs, community spaces, events) and deliver them to female residents of homeless shelters. Important! Please only bring donations that are on the list – we have coordinated with homeless shelters when putting it together considering actual needs. You don’t need to bring all of these, you can also bring one type of product. We also ask you to donate unopened, unused, undamaged and not expired products. Thank you!

For details, times, collection points and address please have a look at our Facebook event on the Budapest Bike Maffia Facebook page.
If you would like to offer a collection point, please get in touch with our donations coordinator, Andi Pintér at adomany@bikemaffia.com.

In the winter of 2017 temperature would sink record low in many nights – it would be around -20 degrees Celsius even in Budapest. We responded by organising the first event of a series of “Crisis!” actions in collaboration with the Age of Hope Children’s Protection Foundation. Our goal was and has been to help people living on the streets, to help protect them from hypothermia, to direct socitety’s attention to their situation and to help the work of social assistance institutions of Budapest.

We established our base in two venues, where we, with our volunteers, collected and packed donations, and prepared sandwiches and tea. During the 6 days of our first action we delivered 2.8 tons of non-perishable food, 2400 blankets, almost 500 isolation foils, more than 200 packages of hand and foot warmers, 350 kilograms of donated clothing, 343 polifoams and 182 sleeping bags to those living on the streets via emergency and regular shelters. 2000 donators visited us and 600 volunteers took part in the work during these couple of days. As a reult, we prepared more than 10000 sandwiches on the coldes days of the year.

Since then we have organised a Crisis action every year for the duration the weather has demanded. The headlines in Hungarian press reporting on the action read: „an unprecedented cooperation for the homeless”.

On the occasions when we give out food on bicycles, we don’t always have the opportunity to talk to or spend longer time with our clients in need, because in the space of just a few hours we usually distribute 120-150 portions of food.

Therefore we came up with the idea of Gerilla Piknik. In August 2015 we met homeless people 18 times during a special campaign. We put blankets down next to the homeless people and organized surprise picnics. We took home-made food and deserts because we are convinced that everybody needs substantial and healthy food. But the most important thing was spending time together, eat together and having a conversation going.

Photo gallery here

For years now we are working for dismantling the negative stereotypes attached to homelessness. The Piknik was a great occasion in this regard for those who participated. Many people told us afterward that their opinion changed in a profound way about homeless people and they didn’t think so negatively about them anymore. They could get to know individual stories and gained a deeper understanding of the everyday life of these people.

We organized a panel discussion at the end of the project. We wanted to pass on best practices and talk about the experience we had. Our other goal was to start a converstaion between NGOs and social service providers. The participants were BMSZKI (Methodology and Social Centre of Budapest), Budapest Bike Maffia and Food Not Bombs.

The project was also supported by the Norvegian Civil Foundation.