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“

Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh in his Independence Day speech remarked that as a nation we have achieved a lot during the 65 years introspecting about what remains to be done. In his speech he said “Our children are the biggest strength of our country. If our children are provided with good education and are healthy, then our future would be bright.”

He also mentioned, “This is the reason why we have paid special attention to the needs of children in our policies and programmes.”

The education of children has been made mandatory by law. In the year 2006-07, only 93 per cent of children in the age group 6-14 years were getting admission in schools. Today almost all children in this age group are being admitted to schools.

He also stated, “More than 51,000 new schools have been opened in the country and about 7 lakh teachers appointed in them in just the last 2 years. Now we will focus on improving the quality of education. In the next few months we will put in place a system of continuous assessment of the benefit our children are getting from teaching. Participation of the community and parents would be ensured so that they can be satisfied with the quality of teaching. The Mid-day-meal scheme provides nutritious meals in schools for about 12 crore children everyday. This is the biggest scheme of its kind in the world.”

Malnutrition in children is a big challenge for us. We have taken steps in many dimensions to deal with this problem.

In the last 8 years, the number of mothers and children benefiting from the ICDS has doubled. The process of making the ICDS more effective is in its last stages and will be completed in the next 1 or 2 months.”

On this note Akshaya Patra applauds, indeed because of the Public- Private Partnership between the Central & state government and NGOs, Organization such as Akshaya Patra has effectively implemented Mid day meal Scheme in 19 locations of 9 states across the country reaching 13 lakh children every day. However malnutrition and hunger is still prevalent and children are still out of the school to earn their daily bread. We need to gear up and reach more children. With right resources we will be able to achieve our mission; to reach 50 lakh children every day with Akshaya Patra’s hot nutritious meal by year 2020.

Akshaya Patra depends on government subsidies and grain allotment for 57% of its cost and the rest however is raised from corporate and individuals from all over the world.

Read Prime Minister’s Independence speech 2012 (Full version)