“Pulao, Rice – sambar, curd rice, sweet pongal, bisibele bath, tomato rice…,” a bunch of children join six-year old Dimple as repeats the Akshaya Patra menu when asked what she eats for lunch at the school. They answer while she tries to stitch a button- an exercise given by her teacher to improve her hand-eye coordination.

In the same classroom, Bhavya is teaching her classmates to dance. With the help of gestures she ensures that they understand her instructions. Her auditory impairment seems to disappear to oblivion as she successfully puts up the two-minute dance sequence.

Her classmates are as differently-abled as her. Many of the children are diagnosed with cerebral palsy, hearing impairment, behaviour disorders and autism. There are 180 students like Bhavya and Dimple at Aruna Chetana – a school for the differently-abled in Bangalore.

The children are given various training and therapies based on their needs, their abilities and interests. This includes sessions on sensory stimulation, auditory therapies, physiotherapy, behaviour management, etc. At 1:00 PM the children assemble to have their mid-day meal which is provided by The Akshaya Patra Foundation. Gayathri Panju, the principal of the school says, “For the last 10 years, Akshaya Patra has been helping us by providing nutritious mid-day meal. Children love the Rice – sambar. Many of the parents say that the children prefer the sambar given by the Foundation than what is cooked at home.”

Most children at the school come from lower socio-economic families. Gayathri says, “Ten years ago, we didn’t have any support system like Akshaya Patra to provide mid-day meals, so most children would just get plain-yellow-coloured rice sans vegetables. Today the food we get from Akshaya Patra is fresh and nutritious, and this has resulted in improvement in children’s health.” She explains that just like in the regular day schools, the mid-day meal programme has been the key reason for increase in attendance by about 40% in the school.

Many children at Aruna Chetana have participated in international sports meet for the differently-abled and have brought laurels. The trophies and medals in the principal’s room are a testimony to this success. A gold plated frame with a letter of appreciation from the Karnataka state government acknowledges Aruna Chetana as the oldest school in the state for the differently-abled.

Aruna Chetana believes that every child has the fundamental right of access to education. Hence few of the children who are trained are also integrated into regular schooling after grade 5. Many of them today have completed their schooling, few are even employed.

While Akshaya Patra’s mid-day meal nourishes these children to grow stronger, Aruna Chetana’s commitment helps them to harbour a very special dream.

Today the 17th of October, we take a moment to analyse how poverty is affecting our children and how we can find ways to overcome it.

World leaders in Millennium Summit committed themselves to cutting the number of people living in extreme poverty (people whose income is less than one dollar a day) by half, by the year 2015.

Many leaders argue that even a dollar a day might not be sufficient to alleviate poverty. In such a case, many Indians live below poverty line whose entire family income is much lower than $1 a day. Here, it becomes essential for everyone in the family to find a job, earn and fill their stomach at least once a day. Hunger, malnourishment, under-nourishment are few of the major factors that hinders the life of such families. Hunger itself accounts for more deaths than any other disease in India. The children become the most vulnerable category. The numbers of child mortality in India is heart breaking. Many children have no option but to fight for food, by means of labour, and sometimes even by anti-social activities. Such is the state of millions of children in India.

The World Bank estimates that India is ranked 2nd in the world, of the number of children suffering from malnutrition. The prevalence of underweight children in India is among the highest in the world, and is nearly double to that of Sub-Saharan Africa with dire consequences for mobility, mortality, productivity and economic growth. The UN estimates that 2.1 million Indian children die before reaching the age of 5 every year – four every minute!! *

All this is because of poverty. How do we solve such a massive problem? Who is responsible? Aren’t we all? There are many solutions and the problem needs to be tackled through various measures at the same time. Thus, it is important that everyone steps in.

We at Akshaya Patra believe that children have the right to food and right to education, which are both essential for tackling an issue like poverty. And hence this became our vision! “No child in India shall be deprived of education because of hunger.”

We serve mid-day meals at government schools ensuring that children not only get one full meal that is nutritious everyday, but also get an opportunity to attend school. We have been serving children for 12 years and we have seen that food does become an incentive to many children to attend school. In the schools we serve, we have seen that there is increase in enrollment, attendance and there is decline in drop-out rate. We continue to serve the children, so that the health and education leads to better employability of children in years to come and that they will achieve better standard of living.

Today, we reach over 1.3 million children. By 2020 we hope to reach 5 million and then even more.

Join us, as we need every support possible to attain our vision! In fact, join a cause that brings resolutions, to alleviate poverty, thereby giving life to many children, and better opportunities to all.

* “Turning the tide of malnutrition“; “2011 Global Hunger Index Report“