Daman Shrivastav and his eight year old daughter Diya. Since the first lockdown Daman and Diya have been making 500 meals for people in need from their own pocket and kitchen, delivering up to three times a week. He has been a lifeline for a lot of Indian students who have been forgotten here and unable to feed themselves.

Daman has an incredible personal story including his rise to the top of the culinary world alongside people like Jamie Oliver in London, and he worked as executive chef at the renowned Al Rasheed Hotel in Baghdad during the Gulf War. Daman has always had a charitable nature and during his time in Baghdad he worked alongside Mother Theresa to build churches and feed the needy in the city. After the Gulf War he fled to Jordan with nothing but the shirt on his back to work in an orange farm – only to find himself opening a restaurant alongside King Hussein’s family a few months later. He was even give it an engraved watch by King Hussein himself and he enjoyed his food so much!

During the past 10 years Daman has continued to feed Melbourne’s homeless weekly after having a stint of homelessness himself in Melbourne. Since March 2020 he has created his own online cooking show called DD’s kitchen with his young daughter 8 year old Diya. The endeavour was to keep her entertained during Melbourne’s lockdown and has now evolved into a social enterprise where he is teaching her to cook and also to feed Melbourne’s international students and homeless – delivering between 150-200 meals a week. They have also recently started a GO FUND ME campaign to enable them to take this charity to the next level and to feed more international students and homeless people over the next 12 months.