The Solar Kitchen and Prosperity area began with the construction of the Solar Kitchen and its spacious dining room in the late 90s, which served as the main hub for the community members to gather for lunch. You can judge the scope of this community dining hall by knowing that it was serving close to 1500 lunches per day, including food for Auroville school children during the pre-pandemic days. 

On the huge terrace of the Solar Kitchen, also known as SK, a cafeteria known as “La Terrace”, began serving multi-cuisine snacks and meals. This self-service restaurant has steadily gained popularity over the years. Alongside this food outlet, the Auroville Guest Service was created where guests could use wifi to browse or gain more information about Auroville. Both Solar Kitchen and La Terrace do not accept cash payments. If you’d like to dine at one of these places, visit the Auroville Financial Centre to add funds to your Aurocard.

Our visit was brief, but warm. Through the Free store and Pour Tous Distribution Centre, we were able to better understand the lives Aurovillians lead. The Free Store operates on a donation basis, by allowing people the freedom to drop and take as they please, you’ll be sure to find what you’re looking for. Pour Tous Distribution Centre provides groceries and lunches to the people of Auroville. It is a co-operative food service and provides healthy snacks, household cleaning supplies, and different food items from all over the world. The services offered to guests and community members is vast. They range from the ones listed above to bike charging and repair areas, recycling areas that provide the community with the tools needed to properly recycle, Prosperity Office and Service Link, Transport Services to get around Auroville, The Library of Shared Things (LOT) which people can just go and borrow misc. things like home appliances, tools, camping gear, etc., take what they need when they need it and return it for the next person, and many more.

These services and more are offered to the community as long as everyone pitches in. This is what makes Auroville such a unique and sustainable place to be!