The Akshaya Patra Foundation is one of India’s largest non-profit organisations dedicated to addressing classroom hunger and supporting education. By providing mid-day meals to millions of government school children, the Foundation ensures that nutrition becomes a pathway to learning, attendance and improved academic performance. Today, Akshaya Patra serves over 2.35 million children across 23,000+ government schools in 78 locations spanning multiple states and union territories.

The organisation works in partnership with the Government of India under the PM POSHAN (MDM) programme, preparing and delivering freshly cooked, nutritious food every school day. Over the years, this initiative has not only helped reduce classroom hunger but has also improved enrolment, retention and overall child well-being. While nutrition remains the core mission, Akshaya Patra recognises that responsible service must also consider environmental sustainability.

Why Sustainability Matters

Large-scale meal distribution involves extensive transportation and fuel consumption. As organisations grow their outreach, it becomes important to ensure that operational efficiency aligns with environmental responsibility. Sustainable logistics helps reduce emissions while ensuring that essential nutrition programmes continue seamlessly.

By adopting eco-friendly transportation methods, Akshaya Patra strengthens the long-term impact of mid-day meals, ensuring that the effort to nourish children also contributes toward building cleaner and healthier communities.

Akshaya Patra’s EV Initiative

In its commitment to sustainability, Akshaya Patra has introduced electric vehicles (EVs) into its meal delivery fleet. Traditionally, transporting meals across cities and rural areas relied heavily on conventional fuel-based vehicles. The introduction of EVs marks a significant step toward reducing carbon emissions while maintaining efficiency and reliability in the meal distribution system.

Today, Akshaya Patra operates over 100 EVs in its delivery fleet, strengthening its environmentally responsible logistics framework. The Foundation has also implemented route optimisation strategies, resulting in 8–12% improved fuel efficiency across transportation operations. These efforts ensure timely and efficient delivery under the school meal programme while contributing toward sustainable mobility solutions.

Impact of EV Integration

The adoption of EVs has generated measurable environmental benefits. Akshaya Patra’s transition toward electric mobility has helped save approximately 418 tons of CO₂ emissions annually, significantly reducing the carbon footprint associated with delivering mid-day meals across multiple regions.

Beyond environmental advantages, EV integration also demonstrates how large-scale nutrition programmes can successfully balance operational efficiency with sustainability goals. By strengthening green logistics, Akshaya Patra continues to enhance service reliability while contributing to climate-conscious development.

How You Can Support

Community participation plays a vital role in expanding both nutrition and sustainability initiatives. Individual donations help strengthen meal programmes and enable the Foundation to expand eco-friendly delivery systems such as EV integration. Every contribution supports the continuation of essential nutrition services while helping build greener transportation solutions.

Supporters can also encourage awareness about responsible and sustainable feeding initiatives. Continued donations ensure that nutritious meals reach children consistently while helping the organisation scale environmentally responsible logistics.

CSR Partnerships with EV Focus

Corporate partnerships play a crucial role in strengthening sustainability initiatives. Akshaya Patra actively collaborates with organisations interested in combining social impact with environmental responsibility. CSR collaborations can support fleet electrification, charging infrastructure, and expansion of green delivery models.

Companies partnering with Akshaya Patra contribute to a meaningful dual impact, strengthening child nutrition programmes while supporting climate-conscious operations. Through strategic donations and CSR engagement, corporates can help accelerate the transition towards sustainable meal delivery systems.

Driving Nutrition with Sustainability

Akshaya Patra’s EV initiative reflects a forward-looking vision where classroom hunger relief and environmental stewardship move together. By delivering nutritious food through sustainable logistics, the Foundation continues to redefine how social impact programmes can contribute to a greener future. Through collective effort and continued support, every meal served becomes a step toward nourishing children and protecting the planet.

At Akshaya Patra, we have always believed that no child should have to choose between food and education. For the last 25 years, our mid-day meals have fuelled dreams across the country. Now we have taken a vital step forward with the launch of our Morning Nutrition Programme, a supplementary feeding initiative designed to bridge the critical nutrition gap in the early school hours. While a wholesome lunch sustains the day, a nourishing start is just as crucial for a child’s mind and body.

Why Morning Nutrition Matters

Every morning, many children come to school without having a proper breakfast. As a result, they are low on energy in the early morning hours, which, in turn, hinders their cognitive function and leads to reduced attentiveness in the classroom. In the long term, this can lead to gaps in learning and hamper their academic performance.

While the Government of India’s flagship PM POSHAN initiative (Mid-Day Meal Scheme) addresses long-term classroom hunger and malnutrition, the hours between children coming to school and lunch break remain crucial for learning and attentiveness. The Morning Nutrition Programme directly addresses this gap by providing ready-to-eat protein-rich snacks.

The mid-day meal meets about 35-40 percent of a child’s daily nutritional needs. Add to it the morning nutrition component, and it increases to 60-65 percent. The programme has double benefits: first, children are more likely to arrive at school on time, and second, they are less likely to be distracted or fatigued during lessons. Simply put, the Morning Nutrition Programme can boost our collective efforts towards improving children’s health and learning potential.

In fact, the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 states, ‘The morning hours after a nutritious breakfast can be particularly productive for the study of cognitively more demanding subjects.’

Making an Impact

In just six months, we have served over 45 million morning energy snacks to schoolchildren across India. Our goal is to serve 200 million servings every year. By leveraging our existing mid-day meal infrastructure, i.e., a network of kitchens covering 23,000+ schools across 78 locations in 16 states and 3 UTs, we can deliver these snacks at no additional administrative cost for mid-day meal beneficiaries.

As a part of Akshaya Patra’s Morning Nutrition Programme, beneficiary children receive ready-to-eat protein-rich snacks, such as millet and peanut chikkis, roasted chana, protein bars and puffed rice snacks. Each serving delivers between 150-235 calories and 4.5-9.6 grams of protein.

Alignment with UN SDGs

The Morning Nutrition Programme is a strategically designed School Feeding Programme (SFP) component, which complements the Mid-Day Meal (MDM) Programme by building on the same. In doing so, it aligns closely with the goals of national initiatives such as PM POSHAN while also contributing to global development agendas like the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), directly SDG 2 – Zero Hunger and SDG 4 – Quality Education and indirectly SDG 1, SDG 5 and SDG 10. It also supports India’s long-term developmental vision under the Viksit Bharat 2047 framework.

You Can Make a Difference

For ₹1,160 a year, or just ₹5 a day, you can ensure a child starts every school day nourished, energised and ready to learn. Your support will help us reach more children, energise more minds, fuel more dreams and give every child’s school day a powerful start.

When you donate online to support the Morning Nutrition Programme, you help ensure that no child has to forfeit learning because of coming to school on an empty stomach.