At The Akshaya Patra Foundation we have been striving towards realising our goal of feeding 5 million children across India by 2020, providing them with our tasty, nutritious mid-day meals so that no child need be denied education because of hunger.
Recently we were gratified to see our efforts reaping benefits when the Ministry of Human Resource and Development announced its first ever mid-day meals ranking of all the states that are part of the scheme, in a survey conducted across April to June, 2013.
A state close to our heart, Karnataka ranked the highest amongst the states with an implementation rate of 77.79 per cent. We are proud that Akshaya Patra has contributed significantly towards helping Karnataka achieve this success rate through the six kitchens it operates in the state.
Karnataka marks the location of the beginning of Akshaya Patra’s beautiful journey. Back in 2000, The Akshaya Patra Organisation opened its first kitchen across India, at HK Hill in Bangalore, Karnataka, capable of feeding 1500 children.
Realising that quick expansion to feed the large number of hungry children in the state was the need of the hour, five more kitchens at Hubli, Mysore, Mangalore, Bellary and VK Hill in Bangalore, were opened across Karnataka in quick succession.
Today Akshaya Patra Foundation reaches out to 460,046 children across 2,627 children in government schools across Karnataka every day. All of the six kitchens in Karnataka are centralised kitchen units while four of the six are ISO 22000:2005 certified.
Over the past year alone the kitchens in Karnataka have crossed many milestones, one of the most innovative milestones being the launch of a food lab at the VK Hill kitchen in Bangalore. Here raw material analysis of pulses, spices, vegetable oils, ghee and flour are undertaken to check against adulteration and colouring agents.
As we head into the future, with our eyes focused on our goal of freeing children from the shackles of hunger, we are thrilled to see the progress that the mid-day meal scheme is making in the right direction. Akshaya Patra too strives to always improve, and we will take the lessons learnt, tried and tested in Karnataka to recreate such success over the rest of the country as well.
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