See a bunch of kids playing football, shouting, grappling on the playground in the beautiful campus of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya Primary School in Vadodara; it’s easy to spot Dashrath, a student of Class VII, making his way to the goal. This lad from Navayard, Vadodara is an avid sports lover and wishes to be a doctor. His parents work as labourers for the Vadodara Municipal Corporation and wish him to get educated so he could have a more prosperous life.
This school is one of the 13,210 beneficiary schools of the Mid-Day Meal Programme run in tandem with the Government of India and executed by Akshaya Patra.
One of the top 10 NGOs in India, Akshaya Patra reaches out to 1,689,871 children in 26 locations across 11 states of India, providing them with freshly cooked meals on all school days. Of course, there’s a whole lot of machinery and infrastructure that has helped the organisation get such an expansive reach. Yet, one factor that stands out is a perfect co-ordination and empathy that exist between the government and Akshaya Patra. Both the institutions are in complete harmony and share the passion of reaching out to more and more school children each year with freshly cooked meals and facilitate education in the process.
These are the top 3 factors that have led Akshaya Patra to serve fresh meals to 13,210 schools across India:
1. Dietary norms: The Central Mid-Day Meal Scheme formulated by the Government of India has laid down dietary norms for the mid-day meals. A project report on mid-day meal assessing the programme in eight states, lists down the ingredients of the meals. The students of primary sections must get 450 calories, 12 grams of protein and adequate quantities of micro nutrients such as Iron, Folic Acid, and Vitamin-A, etc. Similarly, the children of upper primary section must get 700 calories, 20 grams of protein and micro nutrients. This means that the meals contain food grains, pulses, oil and fat, vegetables and salt and condiments. Akshaya Patra kitchens strictly follow these dietary regulations. As a result of this attention to detail in supplying mid-day meals, parents are more willing to send their children since they know that the latter are being given completely healthy food.
2. Innovation in governance: The Akshaya Patra Foundation follows Six-Sigma methodology in its centralised kitchens. All the centralised kitchens are equipped with cauldrons, trolleys, rice chutes, dal/sambar tanks, cutting boards, knives and other similar equipment that are sanitised before usage. The North Indian kitchens are equipped with rice cauldrons and dal cauldrons. The quality control process has been adapted from Food Safety Standards Act 2006 (FSSA). The rest of the process of procurement of raw material to cooking and delivery, follows similar standardised norms. Recently, Akshaya Patra was awarded for its innovation in governance. Implementing Mid-Day Meal Programme to thousands of schools as per the standards set by the government takes more than passion and vision, it takes careful planning and meticulous process.
3. Accountability: Perhaps one of the most common factors among the top 10 NGOs in India is their ability to bring in accountability in implementation of schemes and programmes along with the government. In order to feed these many schools across the state, Akshaya Patra needs to be extremely accountable for every resource it gets and every penny it spends on getting things done. The NGO complies by the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and Indian Accounting Standards so as to keep high standards of transparency of the funds that are being given in charity donations to the organisation. Our focus on transparency has been recognised and rewarded on various platforms but that’s not what truly motivates us here. The accountability for workers of the women self-help groups, volunteers and thousands of staff comes naturally with the joy of serving school-going children across India.
The Mid-Day Meal Programme for school children in India is aimed at avoiding classroom hunger, increase school enrollment and attendance, improve socialisation among castes, address undernourishment and empower women through employment. The Food for Education initiative is a mission that involves an entire ecosystem including those who give away charity donations so generously. You can become a part of this mission. Donate today!
