To mark the turning of the New Year Akshaya Patra released the online edition of its Annual Report 2013-14 on 31st December, 2014. This online annual report has been narrated through the stories of the ‘Fab Five Superheroes’ – Badal, Vinayak, Ambika, Munna and Mamatha – beneficiaries of Akshaya Patra’s mid-day meal programme. Their stories exemplify the tremendous good that comes from nutritious food and education, and how Akshaya Patra’s work in eliminating classroom hunger has contributed to transforming their lives.

The online annual report presented using the illustrated characters of the five superheroes showcases salient points of the organisation’s work the past year. It features topics like an overview of the organisation’s mission, vision and highlights, financial reports, awards and recognition received, and much more.

A highly creative aspect of the Online Annual Report 2013-14 is the engaging and entertaining video. Presented by Akshaya Patra’s Vice Chairman Chanchalapathi Dasa, the video follows the animated characters of the five superheroes as they talk the viewer through a quick explanation of Akshaya Patra’s processes and its impact. In addition to these features, the Online Annual Report 2013-14 also carries a PDF and a Flipbook version of the book. Browse through Akshaya Patra’s Online Annual Report 2013-14 here!

2014-15 has been a year of ideation and innovation for the Akshaya Patra team. We’ve pushed boundaries and the keywords all through were Engage, Excite and Entice! Here’s a recap of some of the things we have achieved in the last twelve months.

• Website and Microsite: We redid the Akshaya Patra website to feature better design and content, along with 7 regional and 4 international language microsites.
• Blog: We redesigned the blog making it more interactive, featuring more frequent and relevant content with a macro perspective on issues.
• Online ads: Upgraded the design quality and content of our online ads which are updated regularly on Google, Yahoo and private ad networks.
• Online contests: Developed engaging and creative microsites to run two month-long online contests. Click a Smile, Akshaya Patra’s annual photography contest allows contestants to upload their best three entries for judging by an expert panel. In 2013 the contest received over 700 entries worldwide. Click a Smile 2014 closes entries on 22 December, 2014.The blogging competition held in collaboration with BlogAdda had entries flooding in as contestants vied to be among the top five bloggers chosen, and to help eliminate classroom hunger at the same time. For every post entered BlogAdda would feed one Akshaya Patra beneficiary for an entire year.
• Social Media Posts: This year saw a concentrated effort in producing fresh, engaging and informative posts via social media, which resulted in Facebook page likes going up by almost 40,000 and Twitter followers by close to 3,000 since January 2014.
• #HungryForSchool was a three-month long social media campaign focused on raising awareness between the connection between hunger and education. The campaign received an overwhelming response with Facebook page likes going up by almost 12,000, famous personalities like Deepak Chopra endorsing and sharing our cause, and of course donations going up as well.
• Newsletters and Emailers: Improved the creativity and content of the organisation’s internal, fortnightly and quarterly newsletters, which have consequently received positive feedback from our stakeholders.
• Annual Report 2013-14: After receiving numerous awards for creativity and financial reporting last year, we have pushed the envelope to create something even better for this year. The annual report is scheduled for release in a few days.
• 2015 Calendar: Based on the theme ‘Makers of India: People who made it BIG’ the calendar features successful personalities from the country like Bollywood celebrity Parineeti Chopra, athlete PT Usha and more posing with the children.
• Hackathon: We also stepped out of our usual comfort zone and participated in the JP Morgan Chase ‘Code for Good’ and the Google ‘Code for India’ hackathons and presented challenges to the participants. These events were not just innovative but fascinating as well!
• Production of 3 online films: This year we have produced three films, Morsel of Love which highlights how each mouthful of food is prepared for the children with a mother’s love for her child, What can you get for Rs. 750? which showcases that many things may be unaffordable with Rs. 750, but feeding a child for a whole year is not, and The Possibilities which tells us about the struggles some children face every day to get one square meal together.

These are some of the highlights of 2014 from us at Akshaya Patra. It’s been a huge learning curve for us and we’re excited to continue down this journey we’ve begun. So stay logged in to our blog for more updates.