The Akshaya Patra Foundation: February 2015

Monday, February 23, 2015

Akshaya Patra’s Surat kitchen inaugurated

Akshaya Patra’s Surat kitchen was inaugurated on 15th February 2015 by Chielf Minister of Gujarat, Anandiben Patel. Along with her was Nanubhai Vanani, Minister of State (Primary, Secondary & Adult) and several other Government officials and dignitaries from the Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) and the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC).

This centralised kitchen by The Akshaya Patra Foundation has been sponsored by the SMC and ONGC. This highly mechanised kitchen has replaced the interim kitchen running in Surat from June 2012-14. The kitchen is equipped with a roti making machine, steam generation facility for cooking, seven stage rice cleaning machine, vegetable cutting machine and much more. The kitchen also has 41 customised meal delivery vehicles to carry the Akshaya Patra food to over 1.6 lakh children in the beneficiary schools.

When arriving at the Akshaya Patra kitchen in Surat, Anandiben Patel was greeted by the Vice Chairman of Akshaya Patra, Chanchalapathi Dasa. She inaugurated the kitchen by cutting the ribbon and taking part in the lighting of the lamp ceremony. The event included a kitchen tour, and flagging off the meal delivery vans.

After felicitating the donors of the kitchen Anandiben Patel addressed the media on the new Akshaya Patra kitchen. She and the other dignitaries also took part in serving the Akshaya Patra mid-day meal to some beneficiary students.

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Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Akshaya Patra Chairman Speaks at Development Dialogue 2015

Chairman of The Akshaya Patra Foundation, Madhu Pandit Dasa, spoke at the Development Dialogues 2015 conference held at the Deshpande Foundation in Hubli on 7th and 8th of February. The theme followed for the conference this year was ‘Scaling by Proving’.

The speakers of the conference tried to showcase how by ‘Failing Small, Failing Early, Failing Fast’, organisations can learn from their errors, take adjustments mid-way in their enterprise, form networks and put their processes in place that will help their organisations scale up quickly.

The conference had over 300 delegates including Kailash Satyarthi, Nobel Peace Prize winner 2014. In fact Madhu Pandit Dasa and the Akshaya Patra team had the opportunity to spend time with Mr. Satyarthi to discuss the mid-day meal programme and exchange ideas.

Madhu Pandit Dasa of Akshaya Patra shared the panel with Narayana Murthy from Infosys and Jeffrey L Bradach from the Bridgespan Group. The moderator of the panel discussion was Kasturi Rangan of Harvard Business School, USA.

Speaking on the panel Madhu Pandit Dasa responded to Narayana Murthy’s statement on the role of corporate partnership in initiating competition saying, “Currently Akshaya Patra has no competitor, but encouragement and the sharing of information will help others take up social entrepreneurship. Being a non-profit set-up, we are ready to pass on our functioning model.