How to Help the Homeless in Budapest

Budapest is our favourite city in Europe, it's fun, cheap and beautiful, but we were so sad to see so many homeless people there.

Homeless people in Budapest

We spent a whole month in Budapest this summer and were shocked by how many homeless people we saw. This was partly because we were there for a long time, so started recognising certain people, but partly because Budapest does have a really high rate of homelessness.

What can you do to help homeless people in Budapest

Donations, especially food, clothing, and pads/tampons (for women), are always needed and helpful. 

There are also a handful of non-profit charities in Budapest, working to feed, clothe, house and help homeless people. We wanted to find out more about them. 

Budapest Bike Maffia.

We met up with Budapest Bike Maffia, to learn more about the work that they do. 

Budapest Bike Maffia (or BBM) is one of the best Hungarian non-profit organisations. Their goal is selfless assistance to help those in need. 

They buy sandwich provisions, get volunteers to make the sandwiches, and then head out on their bikes to distribute the sandwiches across the city. 

BBM also organise '+1 Sandwiches' at school where children and adolescences bring in an extra sandwich to donate to BBM.  

It's not all about giving out food, the BBM talk to the homeless people and see if they can help them out in other ways - a job here, a shelter there. 

Volunteering with Budapest Bike Maffia 

We went with them for two nights and this is what it was like:

We started off by going to Aldi and buying sandwich provisions with the donations made to BBM.

[If you'd like to donate to Budapest Bike Maffia, you can do so here: DONATIONS for BBM]

Next we went to one of Budapest's coolest pubs: Eleszto. They kindly let BBM and another food charity use their back room free of charge. (They also serve the best cherry beer.)

We sat in that backroom and started making sandwiches with other volunteers and BBM members. Making the sandwiches took a long time (we made like 100) but it was a good opportunity to talk to the other people there and hear their thoughts. 



Once the sandwiches had been made, they were loaded into backpacks and panniers and we whizzed across the city handing them out. 





Handing out sandwiches on bikes proved to be very useful for two reasons:

1. We could cover a lot more ground a lot faster than if we'd been on foot (obviously).
2. Lots of members had got into BBM because they love cycling and were looking for a group to share that enthusiasm, helping the homeless was an added bonus. 



Giving out the sandwiches felt like a really nice thing to do. And it didn't just stop there. BBM were also handing out disposable cameras. The homeless people could take photos of Budapest through their eyes (similar to the HONY project). When they give the cameras back they each get about $7, and the one with the best photo wins $50. 

After we'd finished giving out the sandwiches, we shared some beers with BBM. They were all such lovely people and they told us about their other projects - like trying to stop one of the biggest green spaces in Budapest being concreted over. 

We really like the way that BBM combine lots of things like socialising and biking to create a system to help others. 

The second time we went with BBM was quite similar to the first, with a few differences: Strike Bikes kindly lent us bikes to use (the bikes were awesome); one of the members of BBM brought some leftover soup from their work to use; and I cried my eyes chopping an onion 👍. 

Further information
To find out more check out BBM's website: bbm.hu/en/ and check out the YouTube videos we made about volunteering with them:

 

Conclusion

Through Budapest Bike Maffia we not only found an effective way to truly help others, but a great group of lovely people. 

If (when) you come to Budapest we hope you get a chance to go along with BBM, and/or donate to them. They're a really great charity who totally deserve it!

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