What puts a beaming smile on your face? The sight of kids playing in the park? Your favourite song on the radio? The first rains? For many children in India, what makes them smile bright is a wholesome, nutritious meal every day. The Akshaya Patra Foundation, through its Mid-Day Meal Programme, has been ensuring that over 1.6 million children in 13,529 schools across 11 states in India smile with the satisfaction of having eaten a hot, wholesome meal. With our initiative – Unlock Smiles – we are handing over the key to revealing smiles of children to you. How, you ask? With the simple click of a button!

Akshaya Patra is currently marching towards its immediate mission of feeding 5 million children by 2020. We need all your support to ensure that children receive a full meal at lunch every day. As part of Unlock Smiles, all you have to do is visit the webpage and click on the smileys to unlock them. For every smiley you click on, you choose to sponsor a child for a whole school year. You can click on as many smileys you want, to sponsor an equal number of school children for the year. Isn’t the opportunity to feed a smile to children across India wonderful? So, get unlocking and reveal the pearly whites of happy children!

The story goes like this. In 1620, a few pilgrims from Plymouth travelled in search of a place for resettlement. After they found a land, the Pilgrims began to settle down, but they had to survive a harsh winter. When spring arrived, they started farming with the help of a Native American, Squanto. Squanto taught the pilgrims how to cultivate corn, which proved successful in 1621. To celebrate this success, the pilgrims and the natives organised a feast which continues to be observed every year as a custom.

The arrival of Thanksgiving is always a delight; organising a get together with family and friends, offering a prayer of thanks and celebrating the feast. More than how Thanksgiving is celebrated, it is the significance of the festival which means a lot to all of us.

Harvesting (gathering of crops) is a global activity. Although Thanksgiving is celebrated majorly in the West, each country has its own harvest festival; Indian states celebrate harvest festivals during different times throughout the year.  Regardless of where we come from, we thank the Planet Earth for producing grains and pulses that are the sources of our survival. In India, almost half of the population is directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture and the grains produced by a farmer feed thousands of people every day. A farmer to a businessman to a buyer, we are all encountering each other through one basic need – food.

Keeping this thought in mind, Akshaya Patra launched its Mid-Day Meal Programme, which currently feeds millions of children every day with ingredients that are grown on land. Over 1.6 million school children feast on rice and sambar (in South India); roti and sabzi (in North India) that are freshly prepared in centralised and decentralised kitchens. The Foundation also runs food safety labs that evaluate the food ingredients from farm to plate.

This year, let your Thanksgiving giveaway be something special for children. How about sponsoring a child’s meal for an entire year? Rs 950 is all it takes to feed a child for a year!

We urge you to share the blessings of Thanksgiving with Akshaya Patra beneficiaries. The organisation strives to guard children against hunger by providing mid-day meals in schools, thus encouraging them to attend school regularly. Our mission now is to reach 5 million children by 2020!

We wish you a happy and a meaningful Thanksgiving!