Friendship Day is the day you rejuvenate the bond you share with your friends.Your friendship matures over age and you respect it further as you grow older.

This is the day you let your friends how much they mean to you.

Friends become the family we choose

These people are the special ones who add meaning to our lives and make it beautiful. They are there to share your sorrow, joy, achievements and failures. When things don’t seem to be going all good for you, they are the ones who help you focus and get back on track. They never leave you alone.

Friendship day is celebrated on the first Sunday of August every year and this year in 2022, it falls on 7 August.

Cherishing Friendships
Life is a long journey and it is more difficult for children who do not have anything to share with each other, apart from their making them smile with little gestures of love. Thank your friends by standing beside them through their thick and thin. Let them know you care and that they can count on you when in need.

Friends could come from any walk of life, work, acquaintance, college, tuitions, school or even from the neighbourhood. Most of the time of a child is spent in school.

School is the place where most memories are made.

Chit-chatting in class, playing with friends, sharing mid-day meals (MDM) during the break, etc. make unforgettable memories.

NGOs play a major role in making memories
Many NGOs run the Midday Meal Scheme (MDM Scheme) and become the bridge to make childhood better. One such organisation is The Akshaya Patra Foundation which serves mid-day meals to children.

Become a friend to children who need you
Donate to feed the children coming from challenging socio-economic backgrounds and become their unseen friends. Your relationship strengthens when you know that your help to these children can feed them for one full academic year.

Honour the friends in your life by feeding children and making memories like you did in your childhood. You can become the reason why such children make strong bonds of friendship and friends who stick on for a long term in life.

Make new friends this year – little orphans, children who stay far away from home, children abandoned by their parents, etc.

Show them you really care

A father figure is often the backbone of a child’s development and emotional well-being. He is the unsung superhero who loves quietly but gives endlessly to his children. He sets aspirations for his family and disciplines his children so that they grow into physically and emotionally strong individuals in the years to come.

However, fathers in underprivileged communities sometimes struggle to even earn enough for a day, leave alone setting aspirations for the future. Children born in such families often end up working for additional earnings to support their families. Attending school becomes an undying dream for them.

Role of mid day meals (MDM) in child development

Schools serving mid day meals to children are a boon to families from underserved communities. Parents from such families agree to send their children to school since it takes away the burden of feeding them even once a day.

School meals not only bring children to school but a carefully planned menu also helps fight malnutrition in children. For instance, the cyclical mid-day meal menu at Akshaya Patra, an NGO in India, follows guidelines from The Supreme Court of India and the Ministry of Education (formerly known as the Ministry of Human Resource Development).

The Foundation caters to the nutritional needs of both primary and upper primary school children. Moreover, the food prepared caters to their local palates to avoid wastage.

Such a well-planned menu from Akshaya Patra, ensures that children enjoy their school meals. Little to no wastage ensures that children receive complete nourishment which strengthens their vital organs, immunity and stamina, thus helping them stay active throughout the day.

Akshaya Patra’s fatherly concern for its beneficiaries

Akshaya Patra was started in 2000 with the aim that ‘No child in India shall be deprived of education because of food.’ The NGO in India began by feeding 1,500 children and partnered with the Government of India to efficiently implement the much-needed mid day meal (MDM) programme mandated in 2001.

Ever since, the Foundation went through multiple ups and downs but never lost its way, just like a father. For 21 years, it has grown to feed 1.8 million children in 14 states and 2 Union Territories from 61 kitchens across India.

Like a parent, Akshaya Patra strives to enhance its meal preparation processes to ensure minimum human-touch, improvements in kitchen operations are incorporated:

• Centralized mega kitchens with 100,000 meals cooking capacity
• Cooking utensils made of food-safe stainless steel of 304 Grade that are sanitized before every use
• Quality assurance processes such as Supplier Selection, Supplier Qualification, Supplier Rating etc. that ensure the procurement of right and high-quality raw materials
• Vegetables procured and sorted out on a daily basis to ensure they are fresh and of best quality
• Kaizen, CI Projects and Six Sigma methodologies for constant improvement
• Meals prepared from a standardized cyclical menu
• Well-structured Quality Assurance Programme implemented during Pre-Production, Production and Post-Production stages of meal preparation
• Daily feedbacks taken from schools while delivering meals
• Audits and surveys conducted on a daily, monthly and yearly basis.

Father’s day celebration with Akshaya Patra

The Foundation is registered with the Indian Trusts Act, 1882 and runs the largest NGO-run school lunch programme in the world. So when you start a fundraising campaign or donate in honour of your father to Akshaya Patra, be rest assured that your contribution will reach the children who need it the most. Your support like that of a father will encourage our beneficiaries to dream big and strive fearlessly to achieve them.

So, why wait? This Father’s Day, donate online and celebrate with Akshaya Patra, a father’s care, sacrifices and tough love by nourishing children and their big dreams.