BACKGROUND

India has experienced significant economic development over the past two decades, yet many are still struggling to provide food for their families. For too many children in India, hunger is a barrier to education, keeping millions locked in a cycle of poverty.

The Akshaya Patra Foundation is the World’s largest NGO-run Mid-Day meal program serving wholesome school lunch to over 1.76 mn children in 15024 schools across 12 states in India.

Akshaya Patra strives to eliminate classroom hunger and aims at countering malnutrition and supporting the right to education of socio-economically disadvantaged children. By feeding them one wholesome meal a day, we give them the nourishment and motivation they need to pursue an Education for a better future. It is our endeavour to reach out to every child at the grass root level of society.

FOOD FOR EDUCATION

Would you be able to study and learn if hunger was your classroom companion?

Classroom hunger affects children’s ability to learn and grow. To solve this challenge, Akshaya Patra began the Food for Education initiative. All it costs is INR 1100 to feed a child for a year.

I am doing this campaign to raise awareness and funds for the Akshaya Patra Foundation. Funds raised would be used to provide wholesome school lunch to students studying at government schools across Delhi and UP under the Mid-day meal program. 

The objectives of the Mid-Day Meal:

• Improving the nutritional status of children in classes I-V in Government, Local Body and Government aided schools, and EGS and AIE centres.
• Encouraging children, belonging to disadvantaged sections, to attend school more regularly and help them concentrate on classroom activities
• Providing nutritional support to children of the primary stage in drought-affected areas during summer vacation
• While focusing on improving the nutritional level and attendance, Akshaya Patra also aims to address two Sustainable Development Goals: Zero Hunger and Quality Education.

A recent UNICEF report states that more than 80 million children drop out before completing 8 years of age and over 8 million children are out of school.

Akshaya Patra is focused on eliminating classroom hunger and attracting more children (enrolment) to schools and ensure to keep them in school (reduce dropout rate) by feeding a filling, nutritious mid-day meal every school day. The Mid-Day meal serves as an incentive for children to get proper education, improve socialisation among children, and empower women through employment opportunities.

HELP ME RAISE INR 22000 AND SUPPORT 20 CHILDREN FOR A YEAR

Pic: The nutritious meal served in school brings a big smile and positive change in the life of the students.

ABOUT ME & THIS CAMPAIGN:

My name is Sahil Khanna and I am a grade 12 student at The Shri Ram School, Moulsari, Gurugram. It gives me a strong feeling of purpose to help people who are less fortunate than me and this program gives me an opportunity to give back to the community in a way that will benefit not only one child but many p.

India is a country with a large number of people living in poverty. Most of these people do not earn enough to even feed their families three meals a day. Due to their situation, children part of these families must work and earn money to help their families. Keeping this in mind, the Supreme court passed the order of the Mid- day Meal program in 2001 stating that A basic entitlement of every child in every Government and Government assisted Primary Schools with a prepared Mid-day Meal with a minimum content of 300 calories and 8–12 grams of protein each day of school for a minimum of 200 days." This initiative encouraged children to come to school and helped improve the effectiveness of primary education. These children sometimes do not get any other meals than these piping hot mid-day meals and they get immense joy by seeing something that is mundane for the rest of us.

This campaign allows me to improve the lives of numerous children and bring a smile to their faces. The “Akshay Patra’s mid-day meal program” is a great program to ensure that the rural youth are educated and that the students are healthy.
We eat three meals a day, but these children sometimes do not even receive one. Please support this campaign so that we can better the lives of several children.

CASE STUDY

Lets together impact and change the lives of more students like ADITYA.

THE WORLD'S LARGEST MID-DAY MEAL PROGRAM

AKSHAYA PATRA KITCHEN - QUALITY & HYGIENE 

From preparation to delivery of mid-day meals, the Akshaya Patra kitchens operate on a daily basis keeping in mind two most important elements: hygiene and quality.

A centralized kitchen helps us manage operations from a single point of control; this includes receiving, storage, preparation, delivery, maintenance, among other processes that form the cycle of mid-day meal operations. Currently, Akshaya Patra Foundation operates 41 centralized kitchens in 12 states of India and these kitchens prepare mid-day meals for 17,29,325 school children.

The Akshaya Patra centralized kitchens are equipped with cauldrons, trolleys, rice chutes, dal/sambar tanks, cutting boards, knives and other similar equipment that are sanitized before usage. The semi-automated kitchens have the capacity to undertake large scale feeding, typically up to 100,000 mid-day meals a day and they also adhere to Food Safety Management Systems (FSMS) to ensure safe handling, preparation and delivery of the food.

Using these highly mechanized units, Akshaya Patra is able to achieve the highest levels of hygiene by reducing human contact with the food. After cooking, the food is packed into stainless steel containers and transported via conveyor belts to be loaded into custom made food distribution vehicles, to be taken to the beneficiary schools.

COST SHEET

OUR PARTNER

Since 2000, Akshaya Patra has been concerting all its efforts towards providing fresh and nutritious meals to children on every single school day. We are continuously leveraging technology to multiply our reach. The state-of-the-art kitchens have become a subject of study and have attracted curious visitors from around the world.

LOCATION - MAP

Under this program, government schools around these kitchens would be benefitted. This will impact students studying at government schools in Delhi and UP

POWER OF A HOT MEAL

TAX BENEFITS

Funding for this campaign is eligible for tax breaks as Akshaya Patra Foundation as an NGO is a registered trust & you can avail of benefits under section 80G of the IT act. Foreign funding is accepted too. 

FEEDBACK/CAMPAIGN UPDATES FOR YOU

To ensure that there is complete transparency I shall get a report from NGO (this takes between 2 to 4 months usually after the funds are raised & transferred to them) telling me who benefitted from the funding. The details will then be posted from Akshaya Patra on the UPDATES section of my campaign. As soon as I post an update, the platform will send an SMS and EMAIL alert to all the funders - i.e. to you. Click on the link on the email and you can read about who benefitted. That's transparent right.

The below image is an example of the FEEDBACK FORMAT that we will be shared with all my funders.

SCHOOLS WHERE WE PLAN TO DISTRIBUTE THE MID-DAY MEAL 

The Mid-day meal will be distributed across schools in Delhi & UP. We can provide mid-day meals for more students if we raise more funds. This will help bring more smiles and cheers to students and help us achieve the Foundation’s Vision that ‘’No child in India shall be deprived of Education, because of Hunger’’.

For this campaign, the beneficiary students will be the ones from schools around Delhi, Vrindavan & Lucknow.