Bringing people together with food
Trio start catering business to help refugees
PETALING JAYA: Good food knows no boundaries. This is especially true for three youths and 10 refugee families living in Malaysia.
Even though they do not speak the same language, food brought them together.
They have created a thriving food catering business called the Picha Project, which offers food by refugees from five countries – Syria, Palestine, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Iraq.
The social enterprise was set up in January 2016 after friends Suzanne Ling, Lee Swee Lin, both 24, and Lim Yuet Kim, 27, volunteered to teach refugee children.
“We realised that a lot of our students kept dropping out. We wanted to find out why they stopped coming to school,” said Ling.
The trio went to the house of one student to check on him and saw the poor living condition and troubled homes some refugee families live in.
Because of financial difficulties, Ling said refugee teenagers were forced to leave school and start working.
“We just had this idea to help these families to make their own money to empower the community,” said Ling.
They considered several ideas but settled on food.
“Everyone needs to eat every day and the refugee families can cook,” said Ling.
She said their first refugee family was “sceptical” in the beginning of their Picha Project journey.
“The cook was probably thinking: ‘Why are these Chinese girls here in my house, watching me cook?’ She was also worried about whether people will like her food,” said Ling.
But six months later, Ling said the woman’s confidence grew and she can now easily cook for 100 to 200 people.
The Picha Project not only does catering and “lunch boxes”, it also holds monthly “open houses” where the public can purchase tickets to feast on a wide spread of homecooked food prepared by a refugee family.