It is the second quarter of the year and the hiring season is at its peak. Landing a high-paying job is on everyone’s agenda. Taking up lucrative opportunities to better our status quo, rule our minds as we start to prepare for a new chapter in our lives. The feeling is simply rewarding, isn’t it? Similarly, its back-to-school-time also! Quintessential summer days of having a blast and lazing around are finally over, as children gear up for their new academic year. After all, isn’t education the doorway to success and a million wonderful opportunities?

Education brings growth

Education is important for the mental and material development of an individual. Not only does it bring knowledge, it also opens up a whole new avenue of opportunities for the future. It inspires dreams, ambitions and new hopes for the future. It broadens one’s perspectives and makes them more receptive to diversity of thought and opinion. It also boosts one’s career prospects and brings financial gain.

Education received in school is important

The education that one receives in childhood is the foundation on which future achievements and laurels rest. And if the foundation itself is weak, how can a firm structure for a successful future be built? A good, uninterrupted schooling and education while young makes a world of difference, as it is the first step and a prerequisite for a good academic record.

Similarly, its back-to-school-time also! Quintessential summer days of having a blast and lazing around is finally over as children gear up for their new academic year. But often, poverty and paucity of resources prevent families from sending their children for another year at school. This is reality as reports establish the inextricable connection of poverty and increasing dropout rates. Adverse conditions of hunger and food insecurity thwart children’s excitement of returning for another year at school. School becomes a distant dream.

As the second quarter of the year rolls in and brings with it the new academic year, help us in facilitating children start it fruitfully! Your donation will help us in providing wholesome meals that will motivate children and their parents to send them to school. So, join in the cause of ‘food for education’ and help bring children back to school!

A significant journey – one that inspires and restores people’s faith in all that is good in the world – always had the humblest of beginnings. Akshaya Patra’s voyage for the cause of ‘unlimited food for education’ also started in a similar fashion in the year 2000. Now, the Foundation operates the world’s largest NGO-run Mid-Day Meal Programme, nourishing over 1.6 million children across India with its mid-day meals every day. This wonderful journey is now chronicled in a book titled God’s Own Kitchen by renowned author Rashmi Bansal.

Engagingly told by Ms Bansal, the book’s narrative is conversational and free-flowing. It tells Akshaya Patra’s tale in a deeply personal manner, with insights into the minds of its founders, when the organisation was in its nascent stage. Behind the force that is Akshaya Patra lays the sweat and determination it workforce – past and present. The book introduces many key figures of the Foundation to the reader, including its current Chairman Shri Madhu Pandit Dasa; Vice Chairman Shri Chanchalapathi Dasa; Chairman, Manipal Global Education Services, TV Mohandas Pai, who has made significant contributions to the Foundation, among others.

God’s Own Kitchen is also interspersed with interesting anecdotes. The setting up of new kitchens in different locations is always a challenging task and their backstories are quite amusing. India is a vast and varied country and every region has its peculiar sociocultural norms. These presented testing obstacles when it came to recruiting and training womenfolk in socially conservative regions, law and order scares, blurring the lines of social classes among children, so that they have their meals together in school, and the like. The book also throws light on how the organisation honed its famed hygiene practices and standards.

Over the years, the organisation has found support in many noted personalities from different walks of life. These include the 42nd President of the United States of America, Bill Clinton; former President of India, the late Dr APJ Abdul Kalam; one of India’s foremost businessmen Ratan Tata. The book has exciting pictures and stories of their visits to Akshaya Patra, including a photo of a cheque of Rs 12,000 written by Dr APJ Abdul Kalam for Akshaya Patra!

Classroom hunger is a bane that needs to be destroyed immediately. As the author says in her note in the book, “Let us open our hearts, or minds and our wallets to eradicate hunger from this country. Students and CEOs, swamis and socialites – we can do this together.” The cause needs the support of a greater number of hearts and minds and what better way to chronicle Akshaya Patra’s tireless service to it, than this wonderful book!

You can buy God’s Own Kitchen here.