Midland Langar\nSeva a Sikh group, which has grown from feeding a handful of needy people in Walsall\ninto a global service has fears it is being driven out of its home town. Volunteers\nserve up to 100 meals a day to poverty-stricken and homeless people in Walsall\nand The Midlands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Midland Langar Seva society aids\nhundreds of hot meals to homeless and poor people every day across the UK as\nwell as India, Germany and Bangkok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nBut Randhir Singh, one of the founders of the society, said they have been\nstunned by complaints from Walsall Council about the mess their evening town\ncentre feeds leave behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr Singh said they deployed volunteers\nto clear up rubbish each night and had no problems with any other authority\nwhere their groups serve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Initially,\ntake-up was low in the town but other groups set up elsewhere in the Midlands\nincluding Wolverhampton and Birmingham demonstrated popular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More\ngroups were established up north and in Wales before the operation grew further\nand saw services developed across India and in Thailand and Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When\nthe group returned to Walsall three years ago, demand was far higher than\nbefore and volunteers now serve between 85 and a 100 meals per day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr Singh said: “It is really sad\nthat Walsall Council appear to be trying to stop the feeds we put on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“They\nsay we are leaving a lot of mess and they are getting complaints from market\ntraders but we are only there for an hour and we have volunteers designated to\nclearing up any rubbish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We\nbelieve it is just an excuse. Perhaps they are embarrassed at how bad poverty\nand homelessness is in Walsall and that we are doing their job for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We\ndo this to follow the Sikh principle of ‘seva’ – serving humanity and helping\nthose who are less fortunate than us. It is what our founder Guru Nanak Ji did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It\nis not just homeless people who come to us, it is people with a range of\nproblems including mental health issues, poverty, families who are struggling\nto put food on the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“You also get professional people\nwhose lives fell apart or those who were in the army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We\ntry to help people get back on their feet. It is heartbreaking to see people\ncannot afford to buy food.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As\nwell as serving vegetarian meals, the society has distributed clothes, nappies,\nbaby milk and toiletries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nVolunteers also deliver to places including women’s refuges and provide\nbreakfast clubs at a number of schools across the West Midlands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr\nSingh added: “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and yet\nthere are children as young as five who go to school on an empty stomach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We are parents and we wouldn’t\nwant our children missing out on a basic but important meal which will also\nbenefit them in the classroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I\ndon’t think we will stop doing this. To us, seva comes first. God gave us\neverything so it is up to us to share.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Motivated by the Sikh principles of\nhelping others and stopping people from going hungry, Midland Langar Seva\nSociety was set up in 2013 operating from the Glebe Centre in Walsall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Midland Langar Seva a Sikh group, which has grown from feeding a handful of needy people in Walsall into a global service has fears it is being driven out of its home town. Volunteers serve up to 100 meals a day to poverty-stricken and homeless people in Walsall and The Midlands. The Midland Langar Seva […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,37,3,112],"tags":[264,1799,1801,1800,697],"class_list":["post-27952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-local-news","category-news","category-top-stories","tag-birmingham","tag-midland-langar-seva","tag-randhir-singh","tag-sikh-charity","tag-walsall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}