Pending Meal

A Pending Meal is one paid for at a restaurant or other food joint, to be made available to any future visitor who asks for it. The Pending Meal community initiative was started on social media in April 2015 by Sarah Rizvi, focusing on restaurants in Dubai. Once the news of the initiative started to spread, many local restaurants were willing to tie up and provide their support too. The idea spread to other areas including Sharjah, Abu Dhabi, Ras Al Khaimah, U.S.A, Canada, Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan.

The Pending Meal movement encourages people to pay for someone else’s meal at a food outlet so the less fortunate can walk in and eat. The initiative is not limited to United Arab Emirates only and the founder believes that wherever there is a hungry mouth, there is a Pending Meal to feed. The idea originated from the concept of suspended coffee practiced in some coffee shops in Naples. Customers would pay for their own coffee and when they wanted to, could pay for an extra ‘suspended coffee’ or a 'suspended meal' which was meant for the less fortunate. Thus, a person who was hungry or thirsty could walk into the cafe and ask if there was a suspended coffee or suspended meal that they could drink or eat.

There is no limit to how much one can donate to the cause. “There have been people who have paid in advance for the meal of just one person and some have even paid for 15,” said Rizvi.

The Pending Meal initiative is not a charity organization and do not collect funds(in any form). The initiative is purely encouraging people to give back to community by providing less fortunate with a meal so that no one has to stay hungry.

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Wikipedia