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As the end of 2019/2020 school year is near, we would like to say thank you for all the participants of the +1 Sandwich project – students, parents, teachers, and messengers. The people in need around the city got more and more food week by week because of the helpers fantastic work.

Unfortunately we had to suspend the collection in March because of the epidemic. But our numbers are showing the incredible power of this program. Despite of the two month loss we are very close to our last school year’s result:

– Sandwiches: 28.200 pieces
– Fruits: 610 kg
– Non-perishable food: 420 kg
– and a whale of soaps, warm jumpers, scarves, and caps
– 45 institution participated in the program; not only schools, but universities, nursery schools, and a private company joined to the project this year
– particularly pleased for a student’s initiation at Székesfehérvár now our program is running out of Budapest from Autumn (Székesfehérvári Vasvári Pál Gimnázium)

Huge thanks for all of you once more! We can hardly wait to meet you (in the usual way) in the next school year!

Besides we need to say thank you for many people, we would like to tell about how many helpful and unselfish promoters we meet nowadays during the crisis situation.

It is unbelievable how jumping power the epidemic has. It is good to see how much we can do together, and how the emergency situation can get out the good will from people.

We could hardly believe, but the news are true! The segítsünkegymásnak.hu got us together with super supporters for the second time. This time our cargo cycle vehicle park flared with an electric car and a van for the next three months. Big thank you for that to the MVM Group and Hotel Residence Ózon superior team, elbow bump for the coordination to  Önkéntességet és Adományozást Koordináló Akciócsoport. This match would not exist without them.

The Hotel Residence Ózon supported us with money donation too, so we plan to reach out to legging settlements in the summer, and take donations for 3H (highly disadvantaged) families. We are very grateful, as their support make it real. The ones who know Bike Maffia, know too that we are acting mainly in Budapest. But we get several requests from the countryside, from individuals and local governments too. Now we will have the opportunity to reach out for more places.

We have further plans as well. We would like to give something for the social workers too. They are the ones, who are working in the front line from the beginning of the epidemic. Although the epidemic starts to falloff, we can not forget that they are doing a very important work every single day of the year.

The first ride of the van will go to families’ permanent shelter, and children’s home. Universal Children’s Day is coming, and disadvantaged children should get gifts too.

Still, helping the homeless people in Budapest is our main project. The UID Hungary Turkish civil society organization helped us a lot in doing that. They took very seriously that bottled water is very important for the ones who are live on the street. Literally, they flooded us an ocean of mineral water, and 300 packs of instant soup. 

We have a shortage of masks. Even if we had enough, single-use masks are not affordable solution for many people, as its price doubled. The Varrjunk maszkot! national, volunteer community, and the Összefogás-Maszk készítés volunteer sewers got together and worked hard from the beginning of May. 13 homeless shelters got the 1500 washable masks they have already made. Bike Maffia volunteers made the coordination and delivering part.

The Brótpékség is helping us from April, so our volunteers can deliver fresh bread and pastries to 3 shelters. We helped more than 60 families in 4 days a week, and we could take pastries twice a week into warmers too, to ease the mornings.

Who we helped: 

BMSZKI institutions, Public Foundation for the Homeless, SZÉRA Social and Rehabilitation Foundation, Oltalom Charity Society, Kiút Association, Jó Szívvel Foundation, Golgota Homeless Shelter

Finally, we would like to say thank you to Zhao Zhou Tea Kft too. They gave us masks, and they thought of the Maffia team as well, we got nice refreshing teas as surprise. Teas made us more dynamic.

Gearing up against Coronavirus could build bridge between individuals, civil society organizations, companies, and local governments.

Would you help us? VitaminBoom project is still running. If you would like to join our voluteer team, check in here. If you would donate, you can do it here. Thank you!

As we have promised during our Friday check-in: we are providing a summary of the events ot the past week. Another wonderful collaboration came to pass and we have broken a record – but we’ll get to all of that in order.

Vitamin Commando is on the move again. Albeit only in small numbers for the time being, but they are roaming the streets again on Wednesdays and Fridays.

It is great news that a team of couriers from Piroska Kommandó has joined us recently to help with the distribution of sandwiches on Thursdays. They have a busy schedule: in addition to food, they are also delivering face masks. Elbow bump, guys! Together we can deliver a lot more food packages to those in need!

We have also broken a record this week: we have handed out more than 50,000 doses of vitamins since the state of emergency was declared. A significant part of this amount was raised from corporate donations and the rest with the help of private donors.

Celanese Hungary has been supporting our work for years now. Thanks to them we have been able to help Oltalom Charity Society with a donation of 200,000 HUF worth of non-perishable food. How did we manage this? It took many, many emails and nearly a month of consultation. But the result speaks for itself: 25 liters of cooking oil, 100 kg (200 packs) of pasta, 50 kg of rice, 60 kg potatoes and 30 kg smoked meat. This may sound like a lot, but when we are talking of feeding hundreds of people, it is only enough for about three or four days – even supplemented with additional ingredients from the kitchen of Oltalom.

An unusual meeting took place in the parking lot of Táblás Street shelter, the place where we have pitched our fundraising tent at the beginning of March. Employees of UID Hungary (a Turkish non-governmental organization) has arrived, loaded up with donations. They brought 50 face masks, 84 cartons of mineral water (which is very valuable for people living on the streets), cleaning products and what has quickly proven to be the biggest hit: three trays full of baklava! Not to mention that they have also contributed with a donation of 200,000 HUF, which will go a long way in ensuring that we can buy more food and disinfectants – whatever might be needed.

The members of UID has found us with the help of the website segítünkegymásnak.hu. Thank you very much for getting in touch with us!

Mother’s Day would not be forgotten this year either. We have prepared and handed out 400 packages to the mothers and grandmothers living in maternity homes, halfway houses and homeless shelters.

Red Cross’s gift of 6,500 Sport szelet chocolate bars was more that enough for all the Mothers’ Day packages, and the rest we have distributed amongst the residents of shelters and those living on the streets. Sport szelet is a great favourite, always a success with everyone.

Keep it in mind for the next time you meet a homeless person and you wish to bring them joy; a chocolate bar is always a great gift!

We have helped:

The Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta – Halfway house for families at Zugló; From Streets to Homes Association; Good Sheperd Maternity home; Establishments of the Budapest Methodological Centre of Social Policy and Its Institutions (BMSZKI); Kontur Public Benefit Association / Hős street;  Konkáv Community Space and Prevention Workshop; Oltalom Charity Society

Many thanks to the creators of the Quaranteen Canteen cookbook and to everyone who has bought the book. It is thanks to these offerings that we were able to buy the necessary supplies for the packages that we handed out: coffee, chocolate, biscuits, organic syrup, juice, pasta and bolognese sauce. A special thanks to them for also thinking of the doctors and nurses working hard for all of us in the front-line, day and night! They have prepared 600 packages for our health workers, which – among other things – contained sourdough bread baked by the city’s best bakers.

This has been our past week and we will just keep going! Our experience tells us that we must be prepared for more and more people to end up homeless, especially those who have already been precariously close to the periphery before the current crisis. As a result of the pandemic, many have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, and became unable to pay for housing. Due to the current regulations however, it is next to impossible for anyone to gain admittance into a shelter presently – and as a result, these people have literaly nowhere to go. In these times we must think not only of the homeless, but of all these people as well!

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to make life a little easier for those in need!

The VitaminBoom Project continues – if you wish to join us as a volunteer, you may apply here, and if you would like to support us you can do that here. Thank you for your help!

There has been critical situations more than once in the last nine years of the history of Bike Maffia that needed immediate reaction and solution.
There is a huge logistical job behind each and every successful action. And we are happy to tell now that our VitaminBoom action, that we started almost one and a half month ago, at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemy, has been an increadibly successful movement.

But back to the logistics: if there is a crisis, we need to find out in the first who is exactly the one that needs help, how we can give the help that is needed, and who is the one that can support us in an efficient way.
There are lots of institutions where there is possibility for one or two warm meals a day on weekdays, but not at the weekends. Besides this, the inhabitants of many of the shelters have lost their jobs due to restrictions, or cannot even go outside as a consequence of the lockdowns. Every case needs an individual and a different solution.

We have had live stream reports many times in the last few weeks either about collections or distributions of donations. That you could see on the videos – trunks loaded with donations, full cargo bikes – is the result of countless calls and emails, co-operation with firms, donators and social institutions that has been build up in years, and a result of mutual confidence and a strong desire to do something.

It helps a lot that we can firmly count on the volunteers and supporters of Bike Maffia in this present situation as always.

But this writing is about our Supporters. Huge thanks to both the private and corporate contributors! We could not have achieved all this without you. Thanks for all the help, it is amazing to know that we are not alone!

We have received lots of corporate donations in the form of food, vitamins, sanitary and cleaning items.

Mobilsofa, Scitec Nutrition, Renewtech.coCycle, Szappanos Gábor almatermelő, HungaroControl, GLOVE TRANS, Complexpressz, MITKÓ, Bagaboo,  A varrócsapat: Bene Réka, Balogh Tímea, Boros Anikó, Luca; Tóthné Bagó Katalin őstermelő Galgahévíz, Bérczes Nóra,  Brót pékség, Három Tarka Macska pékség, Marcsika palacsintázója Tajti Mária-Csert-Szak Kft., Office Depot, Celanese, Decathlon, Drogerie Markt, Makk Kati szappanfőző, Unilever

Many private contributors have supported the needy people with direct remittance via our donation site.

Others helped us with buying vouchers, and we could buy food, vitamins, handkerchiefs and hand desinfectants for almost 1.300.000 HUF in this way. And we are going to spend another one million forints in the next week. For what? Check out our facebook site, we are coming with live stream reports all the time.

We have visited not only homeless shelters with the donations, but many other social institutions as well, like temporary homes for families, homes for the elderly and boarding institutions, the inhabitants of which are mainly older people and/or those with a weak immune system.

And here are those organisations we have co-operated with and that have helped us a lot in our work. Some of the fantastic co-operations that had already existed have become stronger, others have beem established just now. High nudge to them: Vöröskereszt, Age of Hope, Egészségkonyha, Hokedli, Tündérpakk alapítvány!

Those we could help:  

Menhely Alapítvány, Oltalom Karitatív Egyesület, BMSZKI számos intézménye, Menedékház Alapítvány, Twist Olivér Alapítvány, Isola éjjeli menedék – Léthatáron Alapítvány, Baptista Szeretetszolgálat REVIP Hajléktalanok Átmeneti Szállója, Hajléktalanokért Közalapítvány, Kiút egyesület, Utcából Lakásba egyesület, Kontúr Egyesület, RÉS szociális és kulturális alapítvány, SZÉRA Szociális és Rehabilitációs alapítvány, Családok Átmeneti Otthona több intézmény, ÖKA Idősek barátai program, Vöröskereszt

The VitaminBoom action is still in act – if you would like to join us as a volunteer, you can apply here, and if you feel like support us, you can do that here. Thank you for helping us!

In order to eliminate even the slightest risk of spreading the virus ourselves, we had to put a full stop to three of our projects on the 11th of March (+1 sandwich, Ételmentés, Vitamin Commando). Pausing these projects means a shortfall of nearly 5000 portions of food per month from the social care system – not to mention the additional donations and physical help – so we needed to prepare for a new type of operation. We are focusing on logistics and communication now and decided to put more emphasis on the types of donations that are most necessary in the current situation.

The majority of our team is working from home, but our volunteers help a lot with delivering donations. We have created a group that welcomes new volunteers besides our regulars.

In the past two weeks, we set up an open donation center in the garden of the Táblás Temporary Shelter and Day Center. We have delivered the following, mainly from here, to the social support network:

• 850 kg apples
• 17,280 unfiltered 100% apple juice (0.2 L)
• 32,800 portions of multivitamin 
• 1,071 doses of cleaning supplies 
• 6,000 portions of non-perishable food and hot meals
• blankets, masks, rubber/latex gloves, disinfectants
  

We are in constant communication with the homeless and elderly care system. We provide hot meals to three homeless shelters, thanks to the Egy-tál-étel project in collaboration with Egészségkonyha, and another project we are working on with Hokedli. We will deliver 1200 washable and ironable masks to the care system in the coming days, and in the following weeks multiple of this, depending on our procurement opportunities.

The donations we have moved in the last two weeks were worth nearly 5 million HUF in total, and we are certain that in the following weeks it will remain the same or grow. The donations we received from you for our VitaminBoom! action and food totaled 1.5 million HUF. As a first step, we have purchased non-perishable food, vitamin supplement, and masks, and hot meals were made and donated to the elderly care and homeless care system, for temporary family housings and orphanages, for 1.3 million HUF.

We are continuously assessing the current needs of institutions and use the donation funds to meet those needs.

We are in collaboration with the Hungarian Red Cross, doing everything we can to support their work.

In the past few years, Bike Maffia has always been emphasizing the importance of having a good relationship with not only charities and the members of the social care system, but with companies and other market players as well. As a result, we are able to fight shoulder to shoulder with smaller and bigger companies now, to alleviate the problems caused by the pandemic.

Besides health care employees, social workers also put a huge effort into their day to day work, risking their health to help those who are not only invisible for the majority of society but are also at a higher risk. Kudos from us to them! We will keep doing our best to help them in their work.

Other than healthcare workers, social care workers and their clients (ie: homeless and elderly people) are amongst the most vulnerable people right now. Although we are trying to provide vitamins, cleaning supplies, masks, and non-perishable food in large quantities, hot meals are also a precious commodity, even a luxury in some instances. Thanks to the collaborative work between Hokedli and Bike Maffia: 100 servings of hot food are prepared at Hokedli’s white kitchen daily so that we can provide aid to the most vulnerable groups of people.

As a first step, we will finance this project with 150,000 HUF. This will mean that we can provide 100 servings of food daily, for a week; your help however will still be essential now and in the future as well!

3,000 HUF is enough to provide hot meals for 12 people, an essential thing for both the workers and for the most vulnerable.

Buy food vouchers, to get hot meals to people who live on social assistance. Keep an eye on our Facebook page, where we report on the delivery and reception of the donations!

Last fall Katinka Szabó, eleventh-year student at the Vasvári Pál Grammar School at Székesfehérvár, have decided to start the +1 Sandwich program at her school. Just like that, all on her own! She has gotten in contact with the local institutions where sandwiches would be welcome, figured out how to distribute donations, and finally she has announced the start of the collection to the other students.

It is truly amazing the way Katinka has been keeping the whole project together ever since. Read our interview with her!

Where did you get the idea to introduce the +1 Sandwich project at your school?

– I have spotted Bike Maffia’s booth at Waldorfest, amongst beer and sunshine. After talking to Zoli, who was standing by their booth it has become clear to me that if I wanted to do something (and I really did!), then the +1 Sandwich project would be the best and easiest project to execute in my area. So it was basically a stroke of luck since living in the countryside I have never heard of the Bike Mafia before that. Then in the summer I have asked around, sent a few emails, visited homeless shelters and by October, everything was ready for me to get started with the project.

What was the biggest challenge when you got started?

– My bike! My classmates and I have painted a very nice royal blue box, resembling the coat of arms of the city, which I use to gather the sandwiches on Friday.

But seriously, this box looks so cool that it made me want to keep trying to use a quite cumbersome mode of transport where I would use bungee cords to fix the box to the back of my bike and just fervently pray while pedaling that I don’t end up losing sandwiches while running over potholes. Jokes aside though, the biggest challenge in the project to date is motivating my schoolmates. Not to be critical, but middle schoolers can be so incredibly apathetic! Who knows how much they spend daily on coffee and chocolates, but after half a year many of them have still failed to even notice that we are collecting sandwiches every week. I keep pestering the members of the student association, but even that is often in vain – with respect for the exceptions of course.

In essence, it’s a bit like pissing in the wind. But probably all volunteers in the world struggle with the same feeling; it doesn’t matter how hard you work, you cannot change everyone.

Fortunately, there are people who are eager to bring in their extra every week, and it is worth it for that handful of people. Oddly enough, most people don’t even realize what an awesome thing it is to help others, often not even those who contribute with, say, a sandwich.

How many sandwiches do you gather, on average? Where and how do you take the donations?

– Approximately 45 sandwiches per week, but there are highs and lows as well. I do keep thinking about how I could do more, how could I make everyone more aware of this pressing social issue. I usually take the sandwiches to a homeless shelter for women which is near my school. However, since there are no more than two dozen people there, if I have more than that, I take the rest to the men’s shelter and warming center next to where I live. Usually I walk there, and I carry the sandwiches in a big bag, but on weeks where we manage to collect a lot or like when we have collected toiletries, a teacher took the donations there by car. She is one who has offered to help when I started the project back in the fall, and I can always count on her if the weather is bad or if there is any other issue. But I have met and spoken to many other nice people as well since I got started, which is another reason to keep going even when I don’t happen to collect as many sanwiches as I would hope.

Congratulations to Katinka, hats off to her for her efforts!

The +1 sandwich project was launched 4 years ago. Thanks to the huge amount of effort, today it runs smoothly, everybody knows their task, and with the participation of schools the number of donations is constantly growing.

Schools gather the extra sandwiches from students on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis, and then the delivery person of Budapest Bike Maffia delivers the collected 200-400 daily sandwiches to homeless shelters and daytime shelters, four days a week.

It was a true challenge for us when, two weeks ago, the most important part of our team, our delivery person suddenly fell ill. We had to act quickly, because the sandwiches of the 6 schools of that day were all prepared and ready to go to those in need. Of course, we didn’t want to call off the following day’s initiative, depriving shelters of our help.

So, we contacted schools, hoping that we would work out something together. Even though we knew we could count on their support, their reaction was beyond expectations.

Not only were they understanding, but almost all of them offered us to deliver the packages to the shelters with the help of teachers, students and parents. Everybody was looking for solutions and kept working to continue gathering donation. The cooperation was so successful that we had to ask for extra help to transport the sandwiches only in two cases.

Thanks to our external help, a member of BBM’s Food Saving Project and a voluntary delivery person, we managed to transport 200 sandwiches from schools to daytime shelters.

It was incredibly great to see how the two projects worked well together. In the end, thanks to the BBM community, we managed to find a solution also in the long run, a dear friend decided to replace our delivery person for the next month, so one of our most successful project can continue to flourish.

Our delivery person, Péter, is fine, but he needs a little rest. We hope he gets well soon! We wish him a quick recovery and many thanks to all for the instant help!

PwC Hungary’s team has made it twice: it was the second time they cooked warm food for homeless people. The team made 150 portions, which were distributed evenly between Menhely Alapítvány and Előd utca daily shelters. We would like to say thanks for the guys also via this post. Twice ?

It is pretty cool that more and more people find it important to help others and would like to do something for those in need. The Bike Maffia team building is a great opportunity to do just this in a company setting.

At these events, we prepare sandwiches or get cooking – including desserts of course. We deliver an interactive session where we introduce the work of BBM, have a discussion about prejudices and we also try to paint a picture of homelessness from a different angle. Finally, there is a quiz and we pack the food we made.

As a result of the summer and fall team buildings, 1000 sandwiches and close to 400 portions of hot food were prepared. Some of these we distributed on the streets with the teams, while the rest were delivered by our Foodsaver couriers to shelters.

In the past months we’ve had many guests – kudos to the teams of ING Bank, AON Hungary, Process Solutions, Arrow, VMware, Celanese, Novotel, Continental Corporate, and Decathlon!

For Novotel staff the team building was a surprise event – see below their feedback:

„Starting off for our annual team building event we had no idea where we are heading. After the warm welcome and introductions we participated in interactive discussions, situational exercises, and an informative and at the same time fun quiz – a lot of the data shown was quite shocking. What we’ve heard and seen put a whole new perspective on people in need and especially on homeless people. The succeeding sensitization session has definitely allowed all of us to step outside our comfort zones and inspired us to set up a company-level donation project in the future.”

Many thanks to Kőleves and Dürer Kert for the venue!

If you would like to join, please e-mail csapatepites@bikemaffia.com 

More information on team building events for companies:  http://bbm.hu/en/projects/team-building-with-budapest-bike-maffia/