All of us are driven by the common drive for survival; of making it into the future. But not less than often, that simple drive itself becomes so hard to overcome, that a lot of unfortunate people do not get the chance of looking beyond. That’s where the collective spirit of humanity comes together, to make lives easier for each other. Our children are the carriers of our history; the long way that we have come from, all the wisdom that we have gathered and experiences experienced, torch bearers of humanity itself, and the Akshaya Patra foundation is acting towards keeping that fire burning, and living strong.

All across India, the Akshaya Patra foundation, today, is taking care of providing one healthy meal a day, at school for over 25 lac school kids. The Akshaya Patra foundation began its operations back in the year 2000 in Bangalore, even before the government started its Mid-Day Meal scheme in government schools, which ever since the Akshaya Patra foundation has been working together with.
Since then, the foundation has spread across 10 states, making sure that the kids at these schools at least get one nutritious and wholesome meal a day.

“We began with the operations in Surat in 2012, and since then, every single day till today, we have been to get as much as food we have needed to feed these kids. As of today, we are serving food for about 1.5 lac kinds in Surat and we have not had even a single day when we failed to feed them,” says Amirt Ranjan Sahoo with a broad smile on his face. He’s the deputy manager-operations at Surat’s branch of the foundation.

“Quality, quantity and timing, that’s the go to rule. We are feeding kids and what we want for them is a meal that’s made properly, available to them in proper quantity and at the correct timings. Malnutrition is a major problem amongst a lot of these kids, and their nutrition-ridden childhood affects all of us as a whole. That’s what we are trying to change.

Also, since we have begun the initiative, attendance in these schools has shot up exponentially. More kids are now willing to and are interested in studying, because they have found better things to do than worry about ‘how will we eat lunch?’ Education is highly important and one should do everything possible in all the ways possible so as to make sure that each child is being educated” he adds.

  
Out of the 250 employees who work at the foundation centre in Surat, over 150 of them work in the kitchen itself. The preparations start as early in the evening, for making a meal tomorrow. The cooking begins as early as 2 am, because there are two cooks that happen; breakfast for the kindergarden kids and lunch for the other sections. There are 45 small trucks that load the food and go around the city, distributing from one place to the other, covering the entire city’s area, twice each day.
And no kid ever has to pay for the food.

The foundation gets a grant from under the ‘Mid-day meal scheme’ run by the government of India, but it also heavily relies on donations it receives from benefactors across the globe, because the economic variables are way too heavy for the government grant.“There are times when things go out of balance. For example, when the prices of dal soared it hit us badly. It’s an important part of our meals and you can’t tell a child that dal is costly. We always manage, and as I said, since 2012 we haven’t missed even a single day” replies Amrit Ranjan, when asked how do they deal with economic strains, again with a smile on his face.

In case you are interested in getting in touch with the foundation, please go to www.akshyapatra.org

There are many ways to help make this world a better place, and beyond the realms of art and craft and lectures and education and money and business and going after your dreams and everything else lies food, a basic survival need for all of us.
If nothing, let’s just make that happen; let’s kill hunger, the biggest parasite of them all.

Unlimited food for education indeed.