Meals with a Motto - Akshaya Patra's Mission

Indian meals worldwide are known for their variety of spices and flavours. In fact, Indian food theory states that our food has six different flavours: bitter, sour, salty, astringent, spicy and sweet.

That’s precisely why Akshaya Patra’s kitchens smell of amazing spices and flavours in meals that are cooked in stringent hygiene conditions. For us, feeding more children doesn’t mean compromising on the quality. We believe every Indian child is entitled to a complete meal replete with all the six flavours of the Indian Food Theory.

We wish to provide the benefits of mid-day meals to 5 million children by the end of 2020. Akshaya Patra recently celebrated the serving of 2 Billion Meals while the count so far is 2.12 Billion Meals. We strongly believe that no child must go hungry and that each child has the right to receive nutritious meal every day for ensuring his/her physical and mental growth.

Benefits of Mid-Day Meals

Since the year 2000, The Akshaya Patra Foundation has been running a feeding programme in active collaboration with the government. Today, it is the world’s largest NGO-run feeding programme serving over 1.6 million children across 13,210 in 26 locations of 11 Indian states. But when we started off, our ambition was not to become world’s largest, our mission was to feed the largest possible number of children. Currently, we are running the Joy of Giving festival which would conclude on October 8, 2016. You can join us in celebrating the joy by feeding the hungry.

What truly drive us are the various benefits that the children get through Mid-Day Meals. Here are some:

- Children are motivated to come to school due to a nutritious free of cost meal available in their nearest schools

- Parents are now sending girls to schools since one-time meal of a girl child is taken care of

- Children with an inclination for studies are encouraged to pursue vocations and have aspirations

- The Mid-Day Meal Programme also involves an overall development of children through formal education and teaching facilities

Meals with a Motto

Akshaya Patra has been able to transform the lives of millions of children in the last 16 years in its mission to provide ‘Unlimited Food for Education.’ The organisation is now on a mission to complete 5 billion meals by the end of 2020 – an ambition that it aims at achieving by channelising people and organisations.

Feeding the hungry is a noble cause but it needs a plan, a well thought-out framework and in our case, a lot of accountability. We don’t just encourage donations but also make sure that people know where their money is going and how exactly it is being used. We have a strong mechanism to ensure that people contribute with all their heart not just mechanically using technology. Stories about our NGO have reached almost all the states in their languages including our national language Hindi.

Apart from online donations, people may also contribute by registering for corporate volunteering or fundraising.  We urge you to join our mission. We promise to be transparent and determined to reach our targets of feeding the hungry.