Akshaya Patra - Not just a NGO but a Knowledge Enterprise too

In the recent past Akshaya Patra has been awarded for maintaining hygiene, cleanliness and employing food safety measures in implementing the mid-day meal programme. It has also been awarded for the various continual improvement measures like Lean, Six Sigma, Kaizen employed in all its kitchens. During the 9th CII National Food Safety and Quality Summit on 2nd December, 2014 two Akshaya Patra kitchens namely Hubli kitchen and Vasanthapura kitchen received CII National Food Safety Awards 2014. The Hubli Kitchen received the second highest award of 'Certificate of Commendation for Significant Achievement in Food Safety' and the Vasanthapura kitchen received the highest award of 'Outstanding Performance in Food Safety'. 

During the 3rd Annual Convention and Competition of Lean Six Sigma, Akshaya Patra’s Gujarat team won the Platinum award for its case study on the theme 'Lean Six Sigma for Global Competitiveness'. It was the only NGO to take part in this competition and excelled ahead of about 40 case studies that were presented by leading manufacturing companies. Participating in the 5th National Convention on Operational Excellence by Kaizen Institute of India (KII) - Indizen 2014, Akshaya Patra won in the category of 'Continued Commitment to Operational Excellence' for its case study designed around a Six Sigma Project on Optimization of Cooking Gas Cost in its Surat kitchen.

Akshaya Patra has not only employed innovative technologies but it has also conducted knowledge sharing sessions for trainee IAS officers and also for cooks who are involved with the mid-day meal scheme across India. In the recently held Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) National Knowledge Summit 2015 in Bangalore on 19th and 20th March, the Foundation received the Asian MAKE (Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise) Award from the CII. This year’s summit theme centred around establishing pathway to a ‘Digital India’. The Asian MAKE is a platform to identify organisations that are founded as well as headquartered in Asia. It identifies organisations that create or increase stakeholder value by utilising either existing or new knowledge to improve their products or services. The panel of judges who were knowledge management and intellectual of Asian-based Fortune Global 500 adjudged the winners through a three level process and ranking them against the eight knowledge performance criteria of the MAKE framework.

Of the total 68 organisations nominated, only 20 organisations were entitled as winners of the 2014 Asian Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise. With Akshaya Patra being the only non-profit organisation, some of the other winning Indian organisations were Wipro Limited, Hindustan Unilever Limited, Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys Limited. Read more about this award at Winner of Asian MAKE 2014 Award by CII.

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Akshaya Patra on World Health Day 2015

World Health Day is an initiative of World Health Organisation (WHO) to spread awareness and counter issues on various aspects related to health with a theme specific to the year. The rising threats posed by unsafe handling of food and the need for coordinated action throughout the food supply chain to mitigate foodborne diseases have made food safety the theme for World Health Day 2015. Under the slogan ‘From farm to plate, make food safe’ World Health Day 2015 will highlight the opportunities and challenges associated with food safety.

The World Health Day’s theme of food safety is closely related to The Akshaya Patra Foundation’s operational process. Akshaya Patra provides mid-day meal to more than 1.4 million children at Government schools. While preparing meal for so many children, Akshaya Patra follows a strict and mandatory kitchen process to maintain quality and hygiene of the prepared mid-day meals. Food Safety Management System is employed in all the kitchens to handle, prepare and deliver food to prevent food borne illness. 11 Centralised Kitchens are already ISO 22000:2005 certified and the remaining are in the process of certification. 

The entire food safety management of Akshaya Patra kitchen can be categorised as pre-production, production and post-production stages.  A high standard of personal hygiene is the first step towards food safety and prevention of food borne illnesses. Hence every Akshaya Patra kitchen staff follows a routine hygiene chart along with protective gears. Quality check is done during procurement of raw materials. There is a process to store and issue raw materials like FIFO (First In First Out) and FEFO (First Expiry First Out). Quality and safety is maintained during cooking like using vessels made of Stainless Steel of 304 grade checking and recording of Critical Control Points (CCPs) like cooking temperature at periodic intervals to avoid undercooking or overcooking of the meal. Batch wise Food Quality Check is done by Quality Officers in each kitchen. The cooked food is packed in steam sterilised vessels and transported through sterilised and customised transport vehicles to retain freshness of the cooked food. Methods like logistic charting and GPRS are gradually being adopted and implemented in the kitchens.

Collection of feedback from school and acting upon it, circulation of Dos and Don’ts to all schools on a periodical basis for creating awareness on food safety and hygiene while serving the mid-day meals, audits and reviews on a periodical manner along with adopting continual improvement methodologies like Kaizen, CI Projects and Six Sigma are part of post-production processes.

Akshaya Patra is glad to have been already serving millions of children with clean, hygienic and nutritious meal.

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Feeding ambition with each Akshaya Patra meal

Sakshita and Sana are close friends studying in the Zilla Parishad High School in Patancheru. Though they are both dedicated students and class toppers, this does not give rise to competition and affect their friendship.

Sakshita studying in standard VIII loves English and Mathematics. Her mother is a housewife, while her father earns a living as a car driver. “I want to become a teacher and teach the rural children,” she says, speaking of her ambitions. As a beneficiary of Akshaya Patra’s mid-day meal Sakshita gets a nutritious meal every day that helps her concentrate and do well in class. "I love the Akshaya Patra meals especially the Biryani (mixed rice dish) on Thursdays," she says, describing the food.

Sana’s father works as a tailor, and her mother is a housewife. She too wants to teach, but would like to be a lecturer in college. “I love to stand in front of a class and teach. It gives me confidence,” she says. Sana acknowledges that her parents sometimes find it hard to make ends meet at home. This makes the mid-day meal very useful to her, keeping her tummy satisfied, and her mind able to concentrate on her lessons. "I like the Dal (a curry prepared with lentils) served and the Biryani is delicious. I am grateful to Akshaya Patra for providing me with delicious mid-day meals," Sana adds.

The two young girls run back to their class soon after. It is heartening to see such ambitious children, filled with fun and spirit, looking forward to fulfilling their dreams.

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Akshaya Patra’s message through three short films

Akshaya Patra has captured the essence of its mid-day meal programme through three inspirational short films.

In a ‘Morsel of Love’, viewers can understand how every day the tasty, healthy food from The Akshaya Patra Foundation is carefully prepared across the country by the cooks with as much love as a mother has when preparing food for her child.

In ‘What can you get for Rs. 750?’ the message that is conveyed that while many things may or may not be bought for an amount like Rs. 750, The Akshaya Patra Foundation is able to feed one child for an entire year with an amount like that. It puts into perspective that though to many of us Rs. 750 is not a large amount, to a child it can mean healthy food and education for one year.

In ‘The Possibilities’ featuring the background track by famous musician A.R Rahman, The Akshaya Patra Foundation highlights the several negative possibilities that a child’s life can take without the proper opportunities and guidance. However with the right help a child can succeed in his life and escape these dreadful possibilities.

These videos drive home the message of what The Akshaya Patra Foundation is trying to achieve through its mid-day meal programme, and its efforts to eliminate classroom hunger in India.

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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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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.

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Infosys and Tata Group donate grant to Akshaya Patra

The charitable wings of Infosys (The Infosys Foundation) and the Tata Group (the Jamsetji Tata Trust) will be generously donating over Rs. 200 crore to The Akshaya Patra Foundation. The Infosys Foundation will be donating Rs. 127 crore to Akshaya Patra to help the Foundation construct and operate three new kitchens. In addition to this Infosys will be donating Rs. 20 crore for the corpus.

The Jamsetji Tata Trust will be donating Rs. 55 crore to Akshaya Patra to help the Foundation continue to improve its food safety management systems, and purchase the latest technology to achieve this.

The grant that Akshaya Patra receives from Infosys will be used to build a kitchen in Jodhpur that will feed up to 50,000 children a day, and another one at Hyderabad that will provide the Akshaya Patra mid-day meal to 100,000 children a day. Aside from this Infosys will also cover the operational costs of the kitchens in Hyderabad, Jodhpur and Mysore, and pay the costs for clean drinking water and mid-day meals to 1.5 lakh children in the state of Rajasthan. To top this off the grant gave Akshaya Patra the ability to adopt the closed-vessel cooking method that helps retain the fresh aroma of the food.

The Jamsetji Tata Trust will aid The Akshaya Patra Foundation by covering the expenses of hiring food safety inspectors in all the kitchens, and supporting the costs of the upcoming food labs in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Bhubaneswar and Lucknow.

This generous support from these organisations will surely help The Akshaya Patra Foundation make strong strides in its fight to eliminate classroom hunger.

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