Celebrating 10 years at the Baran kitchen!

Akshaya Patra’s Baran kitchen completes one decade on 25th April, and looking back we see a 10 year legacy of fulfilment, joy and transformed lives.

The Baran kitchen was conceptualised in 2005, when a survey was taken in the district that revealed a large presence of poor and malnourished children. Born to low-income nomadic tribal families employed as labourers, these children were constantly moving from place to place, forgoing their education too.

Though it was apparent it was crucial to set up a kitchen here, the poor road connectivity and infrastructure made it impossible to set up one of Akshaya Patra’s large centralised kitchen units in this region. So the Baran unit became Akshaya Patra’s first ‘decentralised’ kitchen. With support from the local Sarpanch (head of the village) of the area, Akshaya Patra hired and trained women from self-help groups to cook the nutritious food in kitchens across the district, and feed the children.

The Baran kitchen has had some huge advantages to the women and children engaged in the programme. Very often the students benefitting from the food are children of the women employed in the kitchens. This has allowed the cooks the ability to provide safe, nutritious food to their children every day, given them permanent employment so they no longer live as migrant labourers and enabled their children to attend school regularly.

Today Akshaya Patra employes 215 women in the decentralised kitchen, feeds 9,855 children across 101 schools in the region, and also provides nutrition to 1,695 infants across 48 Anganwadi centres.

Though it was a challenge in the beginning to set up the decentralised kitchen, being strangers in an unknown locality, it was a challenge Akshaya Patra gladly accepted. During these past ten years the Foundation has built a fulfilling relationship of trust with the beneficiaries as well as the employees in the region, which has helped spread Akshaya Patra’s programme to all the villages in the district.