New Year will be here soon!
We all are in a bind about how to celebrate it. What shall our goals be for the coming year? How can we make it better?
You may be aiming for a new job, upskilling yourself for a new role or striving to get good grades. You may also be seeking to build new or strengthen existing relationships.
But how about adding a new goal that satisfies your sense of purpose in life – to be a better human being by helping the underprivileged?
And here’s the best part – you can do it right from where you are with a few clicks online!
If you like the idea, then join us. Let us have it as our collective resolution for 2023.
Join the Akshaya Patra family this New Year
We at The Akshaya Patra Foundation have been providing unlimited food for education of underprivileged children for 22 years. We ensure that our meals meet the palatal preferences of children as well as align with the nutrition guidelines from the Indian Government.
Our 65 kitchens across 14 states and 2 union territories cater to underprivileged communities and disaster victims during emergencies. 61 of these kitchens are automated centralised facilities that cook between 3,000 to 0.2 million meals per cooking cycle, utilising gravity flow mechanisms to minimise human touch for enhanced safety and quality.
Our journey
In 2000, our Foundation started serving meals to 1,500 children in five Government Schools in Bengaluru, Karnataka. Today, our passion for ZERO CLASSROOM HUNGER goal has allowed us to feed 2 million Government school children across India every day.We have also been recognised for our work nationally and internationally.
In 2015, we airlifted 1,00,000 meals to earthquake-hit Nepal in April. We also established an Earthquake Relief Centralised Kitchen in June 2015 to support the affected people of the region. It was an initiative undertaken in collaboration with Jamsetji Tata Trust and Sipradian Sahayata Sanstha. This kitchen served 1.4 million meals to the affected people for 88 days.
We conducted similar relief programmes in the subsequent years during floods and cyclones in Chennai, Gujarat, Gorakhpur, North Karnataka, Kerala and Odisha. Through these activities, we benefitted more than 2 million beneficiaries across India.
Our work was appreciated in 2017 when we received a National Award for Child Welfare, Gujarat Flood Relief and Gorakhpur Flood Relief. In 2019, we won the Gandhi Peace Prize, BBC World Service Global Food Champion Award, Outlook Poshan Jury Award and Mahatma Award for Social Good.
During our two-year-long COVID relief programme, we distributed over a million meals and kits to the affected people. In 2021, we were honoured with the Mahatma Award 2021 in the ‘COVID-19 Humanitarian Effort’ category. In 2022, we received the Prestigious Mahatma Award for Social Good and Impact ‘Zero Hunger’.
Other flagship programmes
As our work supporting the Indian Government’s Midday Meal Programme (now called the PM Poshan Abhiyaan) began to be recognised by people and the various Governments globally, we started more initiatives to help the marginalised. Below are some of them:
Anganwadi Feeding Programme
Anganwadi Feeding is an initiative by the Government of India to nourish pregnant women and nursing mothers for the healthy growth of their infants. The initial months after a child is born are crucial for the development of their vital organs. Hence, this programme was started to provide care to new mothers and their babies. We help in its execution across India and have served 1,61,53,556 meals so far.
Feed the Homeless Mothers Programme
Most widowed women in Indian society are abandoned by their families with necessities that last them only for a few days. To save these resources for the future, they skip food frequently. We started feeding the homeless mothers to give them a life of dignity and respect. Your support will give them nourishing meals twice a day so that they can concentrate on making a living rather than pondering over how to survive without food.
Breakfast Feeding Programme
A review of a study by experts showed that at least 199 of 5,158 children get only one meal a day. Midday meal (MDM) is the first meal for around 2.1 lakh children — not breakfast. Thus, we launched the Breakfast Feeding Programme starting with the Government Schools of Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Karnataka.
Digital Education Programme
The COVID-19 pandemic magnified the digital divide, where the underprivileged were forced to discontinue learning due to lack of digital devices. Our digital education initiative in Government schools aims to enhance the quality of education while generating excellent learning outcomes and building a pleasurable schooling experience. It focusses on inclusiveness while contributing to the Central Government’s vision for ‘Digital India’.
Millets in mid-day meals for Government School Children
To enhance the quality of nutrition in school meals and support sustainable food growing practices, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Nutrihub, the Indian Institute of Millets Research (IIMR) and the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) to introduce millets in the mid-day meal menu for children. It was piloted in schools in Bengaluru and Hyderabad and will slowly be executed in other locations as well.
Donate Online this New Year
Choose any of our programmes to empower the underprivileged this New Year. Make your celebrations more memorable by donating towards their welfare and start the year on a positive note.
With one contribution online, you will transform lives for the entire year of 2023!
Donate for a year filled with goodness!
The Akshaya Patra Foundation 