Humrahi Foundation volunteers gathered with the community in Siliguri

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Siliguri, West Bengal · Est. 2020

We show up, every day.

This is who we are, the people behind the work, and what we're building so good things last.

4L meals served Government-recognised NGO On the ground since 2020

Community members gathered during a 2020 relief run in Siliguri

Volunteers distributing ration bags on the roadside in 2020

Volunteers packing relief rations during the 2020 lockdown

Sorting and bagging supplies for lockdown food distribution

The early days · Siliguri, 2020

Our story

It started in a crisis.

The COVID-19 lockdown of 2020 took people’s work and their savings, and in the worst cases took family members they were not even allowed to sit beside. Humrahi Foundation did not exist then. An intention did: that nobody within reach should sleep hungry. Lalan Mahato set out with a van, a few pairs of hands, and ration bags for households that had lost every source of income overnight. There was no plan. They just went.

“Humrahi means fellow traveller: the one who walks beside you, not ahead of you.”

We kept responding: school adoptions, free health camps, cleanup drives, blood donation camps, each one an answer to a need we saw in front of us. Today Humrahi is a government-recognised, registered NGO, working in Siliguri since 2020 and formally registered as a public charitable trust on 12 May 2023. We still show up every day. What began with adopting schools has since grown into a whole education branch: school adoption at one end, free job-readiness skilling at the other.

Our tagline is manavta ki ek nayi pehchaan, a new identity for humanity.

1,500

Days of Daily Meals

The founding chapter, 2020–2026

Programmes Today

Waste, schools, health, skilling

Ploggers, One Morning

Siliguri's first plogging event

Since 2020

Govt-Registered NGO

Born and grown in Siliguri

Est. 2020 · Siliguri, West Bengal

A few ration bags. Then 1,500 days. Then this.

Humrahi didn't start as an organisation, or even as a kitchen. It started with rice and dal weighed out on a floor and carried to families who had no way to reach a shop. Everything below grew out of that.

Chapter 01 · 2020
No kitchen. Just selfless intention.

The lockdown took the trains, the shutters and the daily wage in the same week. People who earned in the morning to eat at night suddenly had neither, and the shops they could still walk to were shut.

We had no kitchen, no office and no plan. We had the will and the urge to help these people. So we got rice, dal, oil and potatoes, weighed them out on a floor into bags, and carried them to the doors that needed them. No forms. No proof of income. No photographs asked for.
Then it didn't stop
Chapter 02 · 2022 to February 2026
The 1,500 days

The lockdown lifted. The hunger at the hospital gates didn't. A ration bag keeps a household going for a week, but the families camped outside those gates had no household to cook in, and were spending every last rupee on the ward inside.

So the rations became cooked food, carried to them each day. Then the next day. 1,500 consecutive days. Not one missed. Around four lakh warm meals, handed over one plate at a time, to a finish in February 2026.

Anyone can show up once. The work was never missing a day.
Read how the 1,500 days ran →
Then the rivers rose
Chapter 03 · August to September 2026
Three floods. Five weeks. We went all in.

In August the rivers broke, one state after another. Six years of turning up every day had built a team that could pack a vehicle overnight, so that is what we did. Assam first. Then Nepal. Then Bihar. Each trip left almost as soon as the last one came home.
The only NGO from North Bengal to answer all three, back to back
1. Mautgaon, Sivasagar
  
  01 Assam · 15–17 Aug 2026
  Relief kits by night. Plastic off the roads by day.
  
  Seven of us went to Mautgaon in Sivasagar, where the flood had pushed families out of their homes. With Nine Story Foundation we handed relief kits to 300+ families in one night. With Midway Journey we went back for the plastic the water had left behind on the roadside.
  The Assam record →
2. Trishuli · Nuwakot · Badravati
  
  02 Nepal · 31 Aug – 10 Sep 2026
  One vehicle, one border, twice.
  
  When the Bhotekoshi broke its banks, we partnered with KarmaYog Foundation. They secured the supplies and knew where relief was not reaching. We brought the vehicle from Siliguri and handled the logistics and the ground work, carrying the goods across the border twice to Trishuli, Nuwakot and Badravati on the Rasuwa border.
  The Nepal field report →
3. Bakia Sukhay
  
  03 Bihar · around 19 Sep 2026
  The first boat in, after ten days.
  
  Straight back from Nepal, we took the goods that could not cross, bought more ourselves, and went to Bakia Sukhay. The only way in was by boat, over a neighbouring village the Ganga had swallowed whole. No relief had reached it for about ten days. We reached 500+ people. The village has about 7,000. It was not enough, and we say so.
  The Bihar field report →
Three rivers, three states, five weeks. The same hands that kept a hospital gate fed for 1,500 days.

Chapter 04 · Today

Day 1,500 was not a finish line, nor did we stop.

Finishing the meal run kept the promise it began with. What six years of turning up daily actually built was a group of people who can be relied on, and that now runs in three directions, in the same city, with the same hands.

Branch 01

Health & Crisis Relief

Care that travels to the person instead of waiting for them — free checkup camps inside neighbourhoods, and blood drives run before anyone is asking. The same branch goes out when a river breaks: Assam, Nepal, and now Bihar.

Free medical camps
Blood donation drives
Crisis relief

Camps, Drives & Flood Relief · Ongoing Health camps & crisis relief →

Branch 02

A Cleaner, Greener & Sustainable Tomorrow

The city our kids inherit is being decided now. We cut plastic at the source, recycle and upcycle waste into things worth keeping, and run cleanup and plogging drives that put strangers on the same stretch of track together.

Recycling & upcycling
Cleanup & plogging
Sustainability

Cleanups & Drives · Ongoing How we keep Siliguri cleaner →

Children at a Humrahi-adopted school in Siliguri learning together

Branch 03

Education & Skilling

From the first schoolbell to the first pay-cheque. We adopt schools and stay: supplies, upkeep and a steady presence, year after year. As a Skills Development Network partner institute, supported by the Wadhwani Foundation, we also run 12 free employability courses, so students leave ready for the classroom and the interview alike.

School adoption
Free skilling · 12 courses
Free skilling · 12 modules

5,000+ Students Supported Our education programmes →

None of it happens alone. We work alongside organisations already on the ground here, holding the connections rather than sitting at the centre of them. More on our work as an NGO in Siliguri.

Mission & values

Be there. Then build.

“Lasting change grows from the conditions inside a community, where people, businesses, and purpose find each other and stay.”

Our mission is simple to say and hard to live: be present for our neighbours without conditions, and let the work be measured in plates served and lives steadied rather than in headlines. Four values keep us honest.

Compassion

We meet people where they are, with warmth before words.

Dignity

Every person we serve is treated as we would treat our own. No forms, no waiting.

Consistency

We ran 1,500 days of daily meals without missing one (2020–2026), and we hold every ongoing programme to that same bar.

Impact

We build rather than replace. Where someone else is already doing the work, we back them instead of starting a rival version of it.

The bigger picture

From relief to a living network

The kitchens taught us something the crisis hid: a hot meal steadies a day, but a job steadies a life. Around 2022, as the daily food runs settled into a rhythm, the question shifted from "who needs feeding today" to "what would let this neighbourhood hold itself up."

That question became our second mandate. The relief work now pays for and feeds a wider one: sustainable enterprises, fellow NGOs, waste-to-work and local livelihoods that each make the others easier. Humrahi holds the connections rather than sitting at the centre of them.

The older instinct hasn't gone anywhere, though. It still turns outward when a crisis lands elsewhere. When the 2026 floods hit Assam, Humrahi opened a collection drive at the Siliguri office, and in August seven of us drove to Mautgaon in Sivasagar and spent three days there with the Nine Story Foundation, helping put relief kits into the hands of more than 300 families. The field report is on the Assam page. Nine days later, when a glacier collapse destroyed the Bhotekoshi valley in Nepal, that record is what we put behind our Nepal appeal. A vehicle loaded in Siliguri on 31 August, crossed, and our people worked alongside KarmaYog Foundation, a Nepali NGO already on the ground there, distributing at Trishuli, Nuwakot and Badravati, at the Rasuwa border — KarmaYog secured the supplies, and we ran the vehicle and the logistics and the operation on the ground.

“Of all the things we do, creating work is the one that lasts. A job does more than a meal ever can.”

Fast facts

Humrahi Foundation, in short

Legal name

Humrahi Foundation

Founded

2020 · Siliguri, West Bengal

Registered office

Parameshwar Niwas, Gudiya Jote, Matigara, Siliguri, West Bengal 734010

Phone

+91 77977 07700

a@myhumrahi.org (reaches our Vice President directly)

Registrations

12A · 80G · CSR-1 · NGO Darpan (numbers & certificates)

The people behind it

The board behind the work

Founders & Leadership

Lalan Kumar Mahato

Founder & President

The van during lockdown was his, and so was the refusal to look away. As President, Lalan sets Humrahi's direction and keeps the work transparent and focused on the long term.

Meera Mahato

Co-Founder & Head of Operations

Meera runs the day-to-day. Through all 1,500 days of the meal run, the Seva Bhojan kitchen and the distribution were on her watch: sourcing, cooking, quality, and getting hundreds of hot meals to patient families at NBMC without missing a day. Lalan started with the van; Meera is the reason it never stopped. Operations are still hers, now across the programmes that followed.

Ankit Mahato

Vice PresidentStrategy & Growth

An ecopreneur at heart, Ankit handles strategy and growth as Vice President, and drives Humrahi's work on waste management and community welfare.

Governance & Members

Gaurav Saksena

TreasurerFinance & Accountability

Gaurav keeps the books. He tracks what comes in and where it goes, and makes sure every rupee can be accounted for.

Bijendar Singh

SecretaryGovernance & Administration

As Secretary, Bijendar keeps the foundation's coordination, records and compliance in order.

Krrish Kumar Mahato

Member

Krrish is in college, and still makes time to help with Humrahi's work whenever he's around.

Seen & heard

In the media, and in our own words

Press coverage

Mega Blood Donation Camp makes the papers

Our 4th Foundation Day camp on Sevoke Road, with free eye and health checkups, was covered in Mumbai Ka Swabhiman and on regional television.

See all press & films →

From the blog

Stories from the field, written by us

Reflections, updates and the people behind the work. Published on our Substack and pulled live onto the site as we post.

Read the blog →

Join the work

Be part of it

Volunteer at the kitchen, the cleanup drive, the blood camp or the school. Partner with us, or support the work. You don't need any special skills, only the time to turn up.

Call · +91 77977 07700 Write to us Ways to help

Our SDG commitment