The Akshaya Patra Foundation is an international charity for children that has worked to transform a vision into a reality by providing mid-day meals to government school children, feeding almost 1.2 million children everyday.
Its mission is to reach out to 5 million children by 2020.
Akshaya Patra
No child in India shall be deprived of education because of hunger
The District Collector of Jaipur Sri. Naveen Mahajan recognised the services of Akshaya Patra during the recent flood in Jaipur. Over 50,000 meals have been served by Akshaya Patra to flood survivors as part of the relief program. Read about how Akshaya Patra came to the rescue of flood victims in Jaipur
With one in three malnourished children in the world living in India, the problem of child malnutrition has been one of the major developmental concerns of the country for many years. The Akshaya Patra Foundation is an organization which has been striving to make sure that no child in India is deprived of their basic right to food. The organization believes that mare feeding is not important. What matters is, providing the children a meal which has a high nutritional value. Akshaya Patra provides a non-negotiable three item menu which is different in different states depending on the staple diet of the respective region. The organization experienced that an average intake per child is between 70 to 80 grams. As a mother finds out a new tasty recipe everyday to increase the intake of the child, Akshaya Patra similarly struggles day in and out to make the meal tasty and nutritious. For an instance as children does not like to eat rice much, the organization has tried to make the menu interesting and thereby increase the intake by replacing rice with idly once or twice a week. The organization has an ambitious aim to feed 5 million children by 2020.
Help the foundation eliminate hunger from our nation. Join the movement and be a change so that these statistics does not haunt us anymore.
The Akshaya Patra
Foundation served its billionth meal in
August 2012.Music for hunger is one of the initiatives of Akshaya Patra
Foundation for the much needed awareness on its work. To mark the
occasion of billionth meal celebration, Shankar Mahadevan, India’s iconic
singer, who achieved worldwide fame with his album ‘Breathless’, and who has
sung and composed music for innumerable super-hit films in Bollywood has
composed and sung a number specially dedicated to Akshaya Patra.
The track , “Ode to a billion” was officially released by Narayan Murthy, Chairman Emeritus,
Infosys Limited, and Sudha Murthy, Chairperson of the Infosys Foundation who
have been long time patrons of Akshaya Patra on August 5, 2012 in Bangalore
following which Shankar Mahadevan gave some performances along with “Ode to a
billion”.
The song, accompanied by a video, in which he has featured,
celebrates the joys of childhood; it seeks to create a world where children can
enjoy a carefree childhood that is not worried about where the next meal is
coming from. The lyrics for this song are written by the legendary Javed
Akhtar. The song conveys a powerful message on the importance and
significance of education and the need for values.
This album will be featured on popular music channels;
download options will be given to prominent mobile phone companies and wide
publicity for the song will be enabled through other venues. This
initiative is expected to raise the levels of awareness for Akshaya Patra, and
more importantly, the need for education internationally, and nationally.
Akshaya Patra is immensely proud to
be associated with Shankar Mahadevan, India’s iconic singer and
composer, who achieved worldwide fame with his album ‘Breathless’, and
who has sung and composed music for innumerable super-hit films in
Bollywood. Shankar will be composing and singing a number specially
dedicated to Akshaya Patra, to coincide with the momentous occasion when
Akshaya Patra serves its billionth meal in the month of August. The
song, accompanied by a video, in which he will feature, will celebrate
the joys of childhood; it will seek to create a world where children can
enjoy a carefree childhood that is not worried about where the next
meal is coming from.
What do chocolate pumps have to do with solving world hunger? Quite a
bit, if you ask the Akshaya Patra Foundation. The Balgdon Pump,
initially designed to pump liquid chocolate, helps complete the
herculean task of preparing fresh nutritious meals for over 1.3 million
impoverished children daily in government-run schools across ten Indian
states. For many children, this is their only complete meal of the day,
which gives them an incentive to come to school, stay in school, and
focus on learning.
Akshaya Patra's technology applications benefit humanity by liberating
children from hunger and a lack of education. They are investing in a
better world by protecting our future. This is a cause one can get behind.
