“India cannot fully develop its economic potential until all of its children receive a proper education” was said by Narayana Murthy, co-founder of Infosys Technologies, in a Fundraising event of The Akshaya Patra Foundation held at Milpitas, California, United States, on 17 November 2012. Murthy also sits on the advisory board of the Akshaya Patra Foundation USA. Speaking to India-West before the evening event at the India Community Center in Milpitas, Murthy said, “One of the most important ingredients needed for the success of our country is inclusivity through education. Every Indian is excited about this concept,” adding, “We must bring the power of education to every poor child in India. It is our path to global progress.”

With the vision of “No child in India shall be deprived of education because of hunger”, Akshaya Patra was founded in 2000 in Bangalore, India. The Foundation serves a daily school lunch under the Mid-Day Meal Scheme to 1.3 million low-income children in Government schools. Presently operating in 20 locations across 9 states in India, it reaches out to 9075 schools. The meals are prepared in state-of-the-art ISO-certified kitchen facilities and cater to local palate. The programme aims to encourage more children to attend school and is aiming to scale up to be able to serve 5 million children by the year 2020. The organizers of the Milpitas event mentioned Akshaya Patra’s milestone achievement of recently crossing the one billion mark for serving meals.

“India has been making spectacular growth,” he said, noting that the country’s gross domestic product was growing by five percent. Foreign direct investment in India has risen to $30 billion, said Murthy, adding that the country was also “number one” in telecom services throughout the world. “But there is another India which is untouched by this spectacular growth,” said the Indian entrepreneur, noting that 700 million Indians live without proper sanitation and 280 million live without regular water supplies.

It is certain that the fund raised will be of significant aid in the progress towards achieving the mission of Akshaya Patra; thereby helping the Foundation in achieving its vision. Akshaya Patra sincerely thanks all the donors and the organisers of the event.

Source:http://www.indiawest.com/news/7720-akshaya-patra-aims-to-serve-lunches-to-5m-kids-by-2020.html

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!!