Food and Education

World Food Day was declared by UN in 1945, to be observed on 16th of October every year. With an important goal of spreading awareness on issues behind poverty and hunger, every year UN adopts a theme for this day. The theme is intended to highlight the areas that needs action to provide a resolution to the situation related to poverty and hunger.

The theme for the current year being “agricultural cooperatives – key to feeding the world” recognizing the role agricultural cooperatives play in improving food security and contributing to the eradication of hunger. An FAO document gives a complete account of how cooperatives contribute and their importance. Please click the link for same.

Click here to read more Akshaya Patra Kitchen Garden: En-route to Quality Nutrition

Adopting many measures as per the themes such as ‘food and nutrition‘, ‘the right to food‘, ‘united against hunger‘ are quintessential for India due to the hunger crisis in the country. 2011 hunger statistics declare India in state of emergency yet again and India’s score is same as it was in 1996, even though there has been overall decline, decline itself is marginal. There are many initiatives adopted by the government and by philanthropic organisations in India to over come the issue. However, this obviously is not sufficient.

Akshaya Patra started in 2000 with a simple thought that children must get education and hungry children cannot really focus on education and it works against physical and mental abilities of the child to sit in classroom when hungry. It was decided that Akshaya Patra will feed children in schools thus attracting more children to school and retaining them in school through regular one hot nutritious meal on every school day.

Today Akshaya Patra serves mid-day-meals to over 1.3 million children and envisions feeding 5 million children every day by 2020.

We really wish that many more initiatives are taken up by the government and every individual in the society as it is our social responsibility to ensure that our fellowmen have their rights assured. We extend our hands to organisations that need support in running services similar to Akshaya Patra.

We really hope that we as a nation see a light of the day when hunger has been eradicated in India and we hope that our service is not even required by 2030!!

Join such causes, support Akshaya Patra and be the catalyst. Donate today and do your bit on World Food Day!!

Lush green farm, chirping sparrows, farmers busy reaping – this is just another country-side farm but with a difference!

Inflation making the headlines combined with the unseasonal rains, increased vegetable prices and thereby increased cost of cooking, is a story every household in the country is familiar with. For The Akshaya Patra Foundation which feeds millions of children everyday, the impact is all the more challenging. To address the situation to an extent, The Akshaya Patra Foundation runs an organic farm 55kms away from Jaipur. The kitchen garden programme is a pilot project; the land was taken on lease in April 2010 and dehydration and green house have been set up.

The 15 acres of land yields about 90 tonnes of vegetables a year. These vegetables are then dehydrated and stored in the go-downs. During the off-season, when the prices of vegetables soar, these vegetables are used for cooking, thus bringing about cost efficiency and at the same time ensuring that the continuously given nutritive food.

The health advantage comes from the fact that the meal is cooked from a variety of vegetables that are not available during the off-season and also because these vegetables are grown by kitchen garden methodology. Spinach, cabbage, carrot, broccoli, radish and peas are grown on a rotation basis all through out the year. Manure which is acquired from the Vermi-compost ensures a good yield. The Neem extracts are used as insecticides which alter insect’s behavior or life processes in ways that can be extremely subtle. Eventually, however, the insect can no longer feed or breed or metamorphose and can cause no further damage.

In addition to adopting kitchen garden, the farmers in the nearby areas are also educated and trained on it. Many of them have already started implementing kitchen garden practices. The produce from these farmers is then bought by Akshaya Patra. Hansraj Mali, a local farmer says in addition to reaping the benefits of kitchen garden, they are reaping better financial outcomes, “Since Akshaya Patra buys the produce directly from us and we are spared from the work of transporting all the produce and finding a vendor. Moreover we save on the money which we used to pay as commissions.” A talk with the farmers reveals that they have resorted to using cow dung as manure and say that the soil structure has improved. A few years ago they used fertilizers which during the course of time had a negative impact on the soil fertility.

The farm is still in its inception phase and has long way ahead. But with a project like this, the organisation is setting a foot to address the challenge of classroom hunger at the same time ensuring quality nutrition around the year with no compromise, be it inflation or missing monsoon.

It was in 2005, that The Akshaya Patra Foundation began feeding children in the city of Mangalore in the district of Dakshina Kannada. At that time children from two schools enjoyed the hot nutritious mid-day meals. As the word-of-mouth began to spread, more schools in the region wanted the mid-day meals served by the Foundation. In spite of challenges related to space and technology, the Akshaya Patra kitchen began functioning to the maximum capacity by feeding more than 5,000 children. It involved a lot of man power. In about a year’s time, in 2006-2007, The Akshaya Patra Foundation shifted its kitchen to another rented space. The shift ensured that a few of the processes could be mechanised and today the kitchen is a semi-automated one.

The Akshaya Patra Foundation at Mangalore feeds more than 25,000 children in 145 schools. The Unit President, Sri Karunya Sagar Dasa, says, “We reach out to schools in a radius of 30 Kms. Schools in Talapady, Mulki and even to B C Road in the neighbouring district of Bantwal. The menu consists of boiled rice, sambar , rasam, tomato rice, pulao and sweets like payasa.

The Akshaya Patra Foundation being sensitive to the needs of the regional palate includes the traditional food of each region in its mid-day meal menu. In the coastal region of Karnataka boiled rice is the staple diet. To feed the thousands of children, Akshaya Patra’s kitchen in Mangalore cooks rice in about 20 cycles and sambar in 3 cycles. This involves the workers to come as early as 4:00 a.m., and if there is payasa on the menu, they have to come an hour earlier. In spite of the early working hours, the employees who work at the kitchen do not complain. They say, “We understand that our work helps thousands of children.”

Ratna J Suvarna, an employee who has been with Akshaya Patra for over six years says, “As I live on the banks of the Gurupur river, I have to come by boat which runs at half-hour intervals. As I climb from the boat, I am greeted by many children who go to the local government schools and all that they ask me is about the menu of the day since they know that I work for Akshaya Patra.”

Today as thousands of children relish the mid-day meal and talk about it at their homes, the good word about the contribution by the Foundation has reached far and wide. Schools from places like Udupi and Moodabidri have requested The Akshaya Patra Foundation serve mid-day meals in their schools. But due to constraints of space and also Government permission, the kitchen has not been able to support the request. As in the words of Karunya Sagar Dasa, “Our immediate need is a sanction from the Government for allotment of a land so that we can build a three-tier centralised kitchen capable of feeding more than 100,000 children.”

*Statistics as of July 12, 2012

In Assam, The Akshaya Patra Foundation has been operational for more than a decade, serving hot, nutritious and tasty mid-day meals to children to support their nutrition and education. In February 2010, it began implementing the Mid-Day Meal (MDM) Scheme—now rechristened the PM POSHAN Abhiyaan—with the feeding of around 8,000 children from a rented place in Amingaon locality in North Guwahati. Since then, it has come a long way to become one of the most admired NGOs in Assam. It currently feeds over 43,000 children in two locations in the state, Guwahati and Jorhat, with the continued support of the government and donors.

Akshaya Patra Guwahati

An NGO in Guwahati with a decade-long experience, Akshaya Patra began operations from a rented place in 2010. In 2017, the government allotted land to build a new kitchen while the Airports Authority of India (AAI) sponsored the CAPEX for the same. It built a new unit with the capacity to prepare and serve 50,000 mid-day meals. It currently serves mid-day meals to over 32,000 children studying in more than 550 schools in two districts of Assam – Kamrup (75 percent coverage) and Kamrup Metro (25 percent coverage).

As the district is located on the banks of Brahmaputra river, most people are dependent on fishing and related daily-wage activities for their source of income. The children from these families come to the school with the assurance that they will get a full meal in the afternoon from Akshaya Patra.

Akshaya Patra Jorhat

In Jorhat, Akshaya Patra opened its first kitchen on 29 July 2022—the 2nd kitchen for the NGO in Assam and 65th in the country. Through this kitchen, it primarily caters to the children of people working in tea estates in the region. This kitchen has the capacity to prepare and serve 25,000 mid-day meals. Currently, it feeds over 10,000 children studying in more than 150 schools in the region.

Over the years, livelihood opportunities in tea plantations have attracted thousands of people to this northeastern state. Most of these people have settled in and around the tea plantations where they work, while their children work in the government schools in the vicinity. As these people have to go to work early in the morning, their children often come to school on an empty stomach. The NGO in Jorhat is making an impact by ensuring these children’s access to MDM, which is the first proper meal of the day for many of these children.

Menu in Assam

Akshaya Patra has always strived to adhere to local palate and regional acceptability in its capacity as a mid-day meal NGO. In Assam, people prefer to eat rice, and therefore, the menu in the state is rice-based. Similarly, mustard oil is preferred over soya oil and is a primary constituent of the Akshaya Patra menu in Guwahati and Jorhat. Accordingly, it serves rice, pulao, khichdi, kheer, varieties of dal and vegetable preparations, such as aaloo matar tomato sabji, kabuli chana sabji and louki with chana dal sabji, etc.

Basically, the menu combinations are designed to ensure that the prescribed MDM nutrition norms are maintained even when the menu varies from day to day. Furthermore, the Foundation has always attempted to improve food consumption through innovative methods. In Guwahati, for instance, it has introduced pitha—a rice cake preparation—as an additional item, which has become quite popular among children as evident from the increase in mid-day meal consumption on the day it is served.

Beneficiary Testimonials

In ensuring children’s access to hot, nutritious and tasty mid-day meals every single day, Akshaya Patra aims to support their education and consequently, their dreams and aspirations.

Over the years, Akshaya Patra has established itself as one of the most credible NGOs not just in Assam but the entire country. If you seek to donate to a charity, you need not look any further. Join the Foundation’s mission to reach out to over 3 million children every school day by 2025 and help it in its pursuit of a world where ‘No child in India shall be deprived of education because of hunger.’

The steam heated cauldrons in Akshaya Patra’s Mysore kitchen are capable of preparing 100 kgs of plain rice within 15 to 20 minutes. This poses a special challenge when making some of the more complex rice dishes, such as tomato bath or vegetable bath, which are children’s favorites. Timing is everything when cooking on such a large scale.

M. P. Ramesh, who has worked with the Akshaya Patra’s kitchen in Mysore for nearly 5 years, is responsible for ensuring that the texture and flavor of food prepared is at its best. He knows exactly how long the rice should be cooked, when the spices need to go in and how much water needs to be added to give it the right taste and consistency. From 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. when cooking in the kitchen takes place, Ramesh carefully oversees every item that goes into the cauldrons.

“We have to put the right ingredients in at the right time. Careful adjustments need to be made to the heat and amount of water poured into a cauldron; otherwise the texture of cooked rice is affected. Children are always particular about these things, and if you don’t get it right, they won’t find it tasty,” explains Ramesh.

Ratna can single handedly clean the 2 tonnes of boiled rice that Akshaya Patra’s Mangalore kitchen uses everyday. That amounts to approximately 50 bags, each one containing around 50kgs of rice. It is a part of Ratna’s job to make sure that all that rice is cleaned thoroughly before cooking.

She says people always ask her why she goes to so much trouble. Her husband co-owns a boat and is a successful fisherman, so why the need to work so hard?

“I tell them,” says Ratna, “that it gives me a great deal of satisfaction to know I do this for children. My work means a lot to me. This is something that is all my own, and I love my job,” she says with a radiant smile.

Before a mechanised rice cleaner was installed, she used to clean all the rice by hand, sifting through bag after bag in preparation for the following day’s cooking. It has become much easier for her now that there is a mechanised machine, but she explains that there is still a second round of cleaning to be done. “We have to make sure there are no particles at all in the grains,” she says. “Children won’t like finding them in the food. We have to be very thorough.”

We serve 1.3 million children everyday with freshly cooked food as a secular, non-governmental organisation (NGO) helping children. That means employing hundreds of people throughout the country and empowering scores of women. At the corner stone of this colossal effort, spearheading the Foundation on its ambitious mission to serve 5 million children by 2020, is missionary zeal. Missionaries’ unending dedication has been instrumental in transforming Akshaya Patra from a small pilot program to one of the largest non-profits in the world, implementing one of the biggest school lunch programs in history.

Nandan Acharya Dasa, who oversees day to day operations of Akshaya Patra’s Mangalore kitchen, knows well the kind of dedication and effort employees put in to serve children. Before a cold storage unit was installed in the kitchen, he says, they used to stay up into late hours of the night cutting vegetables in an effort to keep them as fresh as possible before cooking.

“Because,” he says, “Mangalore weather is very humid. They would not remain fresh for long if they were cut and left outside. Freshness of produce affects taste. We have to make sure that the food is as tasty as possible. Children will make out the difference very soon.”

On a tour of the premises, he explains, how kitchen employees used to lift heavy, fully packed steel containers of food, carrying them from the kitchen to waiting food vans before they had a conveyor belt installed in the system.

A newly acquired rice cleaning machine has helped clean rice more efficiently and faster. Through all the challenges they have faced, however, they have kept one thing in mind, says Nandan Acharya Dasa – “The duty of serving hungry children is a very noble one, that’s what we always try to remember”.

*As of April 2011

It would be natural to assume that after all the freshly cooked food has been packed into steel containers most of the work in the kitchen is done. But as Mallesh H.K., Loading Supervisor explains, this is not the case. Our Hubli facility has 35 food vans travelling on specific routes around the Hubli-Dharwad region, each one distributing food to an average 22 schools per route. Determining the number of containers and amount of food that each school along a route needs, is one of the challenges Mallesh must address everyday. The containers need to be packed to optimise time spent at every stop, because with so many schools to be covered, each van has little time to waste when they arrive at the schools.

Mallesh underwent one week of training which included on route travel as well as kitchen work and then worked for a year on routes before becoming a loading supervisor.

“Our route supervisors collect information from every school about how much food we should deliver for the next day, based on approximately how many children will be attending. They fill in a form which contains all the schools in the route and the projected number of containers of food each school needs. This is then consolidated into a separate sheet for all routes,” he says pointing to a sheet which contains details such as the number of schools per route, the total quantity of rice, sambar, curd or sweet that is required (depending on the menu for the day).

Written in the rows of a consolidated tracking sheet are the names of each route around the Hubli-Dharwad region. Its columns represent the quantity and type of food. “If there is 25 written in the column headed 50% under ‘Rice/Palav‘ on a row containing the name ‘Mugad’, we’ll know that for the Mugad route in the Hubli-Dharwad area, a food van must have a total of 25 steel containers packed only to 50% capacity of rice or palav,” he explains. The containers come in large, small and medium sizes, he adds and all of them will have been labeled the previous evening with a corresponding route name and required quantity.

The loading and distribution processes have been perfected over time, says Yagneswar Das, who heads the entire operations of the facility. They recently optimised the number of routes needed to cover all schools, bringing it down from 38 to 35. “We all got together and decided to make it more efficient,” he says. “The route optimisation was done by us, in-house,” he says. We use optimisation techniques not just in distribution, but also in the actual cooking processes to reduce costs. Akshaya Patra’s all India cost for one meal is just Rs. 6. Today, for every rupee donated to the Foundation, 9 paisa is spent on administrative costs.

Mallesh and his team work diligently everyday, adhering to a strict schedule to ensure food vans leave on time. When their day is over, they will have loaded a total of 5000 containers into all 35 vans.

He heard two people speaking of Akshaya Patra at a bus stop one day, says Gopal Londe and grew curious about the Foundation. “They were talking about how there was good work here and the compensation was excellent. When I came to Hubli, I decided to find out more. I didn’t know this then, but it turned out one of my cousins was working here too. And that’s how I came to do my job,” he says. In the four years since he first started, says Gopal, he has worked on all three floors of Hubli’s massive infrastructure, often hailed as one of the largest kitchens in the world. Currently, he and his co-workers are responsible for rice cleaning on the 2nd floor.

Akshaya Patra’s third generation of kitchens, like the Hubli facility, harness the potential energy in gravity for the benefit of the cooking process in what has been termed ‘gravity flow mechanism’. Dal and rice stored in silos on the 3rd floor flows down through chutes to the 2nd floor to be cleaned before cooking. By the time their day is over, Gopal and his co-workers will have cleaned approximately 15 to 16 tonnes of rice, 3 to 3.5 tonnes of dal and 9 to 10 tonnes of vegetables. Masala preparation and vegetable cutting also takes place on this floor. From here, they must be sent to the 1st floor where the actual cooking takes place in steam heated cauldrons. Here too, the potential energy in gravity is harnessed.

When Gopal lifts a steel lid approximately 20 inches in diameter, he reveals how tonnes of rice, dal and vegetables find their way to the cauldrons below. The floor of the 2nd storey is lined with two neat rows of such lids. Each one covers a chute that leads directly to the cauldrons. One row is reserved specifically for the rice cauldrons the other set for the dal, vegetables and masala used to make sambar. An open passage connects the two floors, allowing staff to communicate and coordinate their efforts. As the cooking in each cauldron is completed, a signal from the 1st floor, given either verbally or through a walkie-talkie, alerts Gopal and his team upstairs to pour rice, dal or any other required ingredients down the chutes to corresponding cauldrons.

On the 1st floor, as each cauldron of rice has finished cooking, a team will be ready with trolleys into which the steaming rice is emptied. Then they take the rice to the large open chute that connects the 2nd floor to the ground floor. Each sambar cauldron has a connecting pipe flowing into a main duct that also leads to the ground floor.

A team of members, ready with the requirements for each school, carefully pack food into steel containers to meet the corresponding route supervisor’s request. Conveyor belts running the length of the packing area lead to the waiting food vans outside.

Travelling on a bike in 380 to 400 celcius degree heat on rough, unpredictable roads to remote villages is sometimes a part of Kiran Karigoudra’s job. Working as he does inspecting schools in Dharwad city and surrounding rural areas, there is nothing he has not come across in his five years as an inspection supervisor.

“If a van is delayed due to unavoidable reasons, I have to phone up all the principals in the pending schools to let them know about the situation. Sometimes there might be trouble in a village and the van will get held up, we have to manage that situation as soon as possible,” he says. Many rural villages in the region are located in remote forest areas where the poor condition of roads poses a problem to vehicles and special care needs to be taken during rainy days. Roads will often be blocked by rock or debris, and on occasions, Kiran has to place requests with the concerned authorities for the improvement of roads.

Having grown up in Dharwad himself, Kiran knows and understands very well the area in which he works. “In this school here,” he says of a remote village ensconced in the forests that surround Dharwad near Kalkeri, “children only come to school if there is food. People do depend on Akshaya Patra. The teachers are very dedicated too. Two of them walk 7km one way just to come here and teach.” According to Kiran, at least half the children in most villages of the region attend classes because of school lunch. “A cooked meal has made so much difference for education” he says. “Earlier, when the Government used to give dry rations, children would only attend school for one or two days when they distributed rations, take the rice and dal and then leave. They wouldn’t come back until the same time next month. Nowadays they come everyday.”

When inspecting, Kiran has to make sure that food arrives at schools on time, is satisfactory to the children and is in sufficient quantities, a job which he thoroughly enjoys. “I feel a great deal of happiness working for Akshaya Patra, because my work is for children. Here, I get responsibility and I get freedom to do my work,” he says.