Akshaya Patra Wins ABP News Positive Award 2015

The Akshaya Patra Foundation has won the ABP News Positive Award 2015 for being a symbol of positive change in society. The organisation received the award in a ceremony conducted in New Delhi on 10 December.

The ABP News Awards recognise the notable work individuals or organisations do for the welfare of the society.  The awards were presented in 11 different categories. From each section, five contestants were chosen for the final rounds. The finalists were then judged by a panel of five members.

The ABP News Positive Award 2015 was carried out mainly through three stages- inviting entries, compiling a list of top 50 entries and finally selecting winners by the jury.  While choosing the final winner, public voting was also taken into consideration.

To get the full coverage on the latest NGO news awards, tune into the ABP news channel at 7.p.m. on 19 December, 2015.

Educate and Empower Girls for Better Society

It’s been many years since the empowerment of women became a global issue. But we still a long way to go before women truly have equal standing in society.

Empowerment of women should start from childhood, and education is the best way to achieve this.  An opportunity to attend school can instil confidence, improve intelligence and provide independence to girls.

However, the reality is, unlike boys, girls are not getting the opportunity to attend schools. 

The steps taken by Indian Government to make education a fundamental right for all children, has helped improve the situation and has also helped provide education for girls.  This was how programmes like National Program for Education of Girls at Elementary Level’ (NPEGEL), Mahila Samakhya Program’ and ‘‘Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya Scheme’ were introduced in India.

NGOs too have worked relentlessly to empower women in India. The Akshaya Patra Foundation, a top NGO in India has always stood for the welfare of girls and women. The Mid-Day Meal Programme, run by the organisation has helped bring millions of girls back to school. Besides this, the organisation provides employment to hundreds of women across its 24 units, thereby giving them regular income and higher standing in society.

Like Akshaya Patra, each one of us can also make a change in lives of our girl children.  We can make a small contribution to send our daughters to school. With this small effort we can transform the lives of entire generations of women.

Let the change starts with me.

Protect Children’s Rights this Human Rights Day

"To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity. To impose on them a wretched life of hunger and deprivation is to dehumanise them.”

                                                                       ---- Nelson Mandela

Happy Human Rights Day!

December 10 is Human Rights Day. It is on this day; 63 years back the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Though the Human Rights Day was an outcome of the World War II, protecting human rights still remains to be one of the main focuses around the world. This is thanks to the non-profit organisations that have dedicated their time and work to expose different issues affecting humans and initiated actions to protect and support human rights all these years.

Human Rights Day 2015 is dedicated to the 50^th anniversary of the two main covenants on Human Rights- International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

While the 2014 theme of Human Rights Day - ‘Human Rights 365’ or celebration of ‘every day as Human Rights Day’ is still going on, the focus  this year will be spreading awareness about the four freedoms – freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.  These freedoms form the basis for the International Bill of Human Rights.

This year, the United Nations is also conducting events to honour the memories of its two major advocates Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt. The four freedoms were first voiced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941 and his wife Eleanor helped add these rights into documents.

In India, protecting rights of children has been taken up enthusiastically by a non-profit organization called The Akshaya Patra Foundation. Delivering nutritious mid-day meals since 2000, the organisation tries to protect children from poverty, hunger, malnutrition and illiteracy.

Starting the efforts with feeding 1,500 children 15 years ago, the non-profit organisation now feeds free mid-day meals to over 1.4 million children in 24 locations across 10 states.  However, the non-governmental organisation wants to reach 5 million children by 2020.

The menu is designed to include all the nutrients for children’s growth and also to suit the local palate. The organisation has custom designed meal distribution vehicles to keep the meals warm and fresh till they were delivered to the children.

These measures have helped improve school enrolment, class attendance and children’s performance. Studies have also shown that children were able to concentrate better in class after they started eating the Akshaya Patra meals.  This initiative has helped bring hope to over a million underserved children in India.

The work that Akshaya Patra has undertaken shows the ongoing efforts to secure children their basic rights in India. This Human Rights Day, let us stand together and fight the issues that Indian children are still facing.

On this occasion, support human rights; support our children’s rights. Serve a filling meal to children on this Human Rights Day and help them to reach their goal.

NGO in Karnataka Helping Children Eat Healthy Food

Nearly 20 million young children in the world are malnourished and more than one third of all child deaths come from malnutrition.  In India, efforts have been going on to tackle this problem. This was how The Akshaya Patra Foundation, a NGO implementing the mid-day meal programme, was born. Starting its work as a NGO in Karnataka back in 2000, the organisation is now spread across 24 locations in 10 Indian states and feeds 1.4 million underserved children. The stories of hope revealed by Akshaya Patra beneficiaries show the importance of food and education in life and are also good enough to be converted into inspirational moral stories for children.  The initiative has received wide recognition and people from different parts of the world have come forward to support the cause and donate to NGO.

Most of these children come from low income families and the free lunches have helped make a huge difference in their lives.  While talking to the Akshaya Patra, NGO in Karnataka, children have revealed how the nutritious meals have helped them to concentrate in studies and set high goals in life. Having high aspirations in life, these young students have served as inspirations for moral stories for children.

Akshaya Patra beneficiaries have revealed their readiness to serve the society as teacher, police officer or soldier.  Sakshita, an 8^th standard student of Zilla Parishad High School in Patancheru, is a topper in her class and wants to teach rural children; while Darshan, a 14-year-old student of the Government Lower Primary School in Dasrahalli, wants to join the Indian Army.  Harsha, a class IX student at The Government High School in Shivnahalli, who lost his mother at a young age, wants to become a police officer and help society. Though these children have acknowledged the role of Akshaya Patra’s mid-day meal in making a difference in their lives, the organisation attributes its success to the people who donate to charity generously.

The organisation provides innumerable options for people who want to donate to NGO.  Most importantly, donating online can help save tax. A contribution of ₹ 500 or more can get 100% tax exemption in India. Feeding a child a year costs only ₹ 750 and the organisation also accepts donations in the form of a kitchen equipment or meal delivery van. 

The NGO in Karnataka operates in six places and feeds 463,682 children from 2,629 schools.  Two kitchens- HK Hill and Vasanthpura are located in Bengaluru, while the other four kitchens function in other parts of Karnataka like Ballari, Hubballi, Mangaluru and Mysuru.  Akshaya Patra takes extra care to ensure that school children get all the nutrients needed for growth. To make the meal more appealing, these kitchens have designed special menus for Karnataka which include sambar, rasam, dal and rice.

The Akshaya Patra Foundation wants to serve more school children in India so that classroom hunger will disappear for good and all we get are good moral stories for children from all locations we serve at.

Make the World a Better Place for Our Children

Happy Universal Children’s Day!

Childhood is one of the most beautiful periods in life and every child should get an opportunity to enjoy it.  This is why November 20 is observed as Universal Children’s Day every year! The whole idea behind this celebration is improving children’s lives and making the world a better place for them. 

Living conditions of children have improved over the past few years.  However, some issues like poverty, child labour and hunger continue to haunt our children. Nearly 400 million children across the world still live in extreme poverty and do not get access to nutrition or education. The most concerning part is that a majority of these children live in developing countries, including India.

We are yet to get rid of classroom hunger or malnutrition. However, nutritional status of Indian children has improved considerably over the past few years and a major part of this credit goes to the Government and NGOs like The Akshaya Patra Foundation.

The Akshaya Patra Foundation, a leading NGO in India, had been trying to improve our children’s lives by distributing nutritious mid-day meals to school children in India. Starting the initiative with 1,500 school children in 2000, Akshaya Patra has succeeded in releasing 1.4 million children from the clutches of hunger. 

Interestingly, these mid-day meals have not only helped improve classroom attendance, but also have helped improve confidence in children.

The Akshaya Patra Foundation’s mission is to reach 5 million children by 2020 so that more children will get an opportunity to  eat healthy and get proper education.

Children are the future of a nation. On this Universal Children’s Day, join Akshaya Patra to fight classroom hunger and return the right to education to our lovely children.

Akshaya Patra Hyderabad Extends its Kitchen Unit

With the aim to feed more children Akshaya Patra Hyderabad has extended its centralised kitchen unit. The additional section will house extra cauldrons along with a cold room. The NGO latest news covers that the Foundation had an inaugural ceremony of the extended section of the kitchen. The new section was inaugurated by Professor V.S. Rao - Director BITS Pilani, Hyderabad in the presence of Akshaya Patra Hyderabad representatives Satya Goura Chandra Dasa – Unit President, and Raja Hamsa Dasa - Operations Manager.

Presently, Akshaya Patra Hyderabad provides freshly cooked nutritious mid-day meals to 54,849 children in 454 government schools of the region. The Foundation has also been involved in feeding the children of Anganwadi centers. The current reach of Akshaya Patra Hyderabad in this feeding programme is 38,087 Anganwadi children across 176 centers. The extension of the kitchen will certainly aid in feeding the children of Hyderabad both in government schools and Anganwadi centers.

Read more about the Hyderabad Kitchen at: http://www.akshayapatra.org/news/kitchen-extension-inauguration-at-hyderabad-unit

An Ideal Mid-Day Meal for School Children

An estimate from the World Health Organization (WHO) shows that nearly 1.2 billion people in the world are poor.  Poverty is a huge issue in India too. The Indian economy is growing fast, but the nation is still to wipe out poverty completely from its soil. Poverty has a huge impact on people’s lives, especially for children. With no income to even have a basic meal a day children are forced to work to help supplement the family income. Thousands of children in the country miss out their education to support their family. Interestingly, there has been an improvement in this phenomenon since 2000, when The Akshaya Patra Foundation, an initiative founded with the motive that ‘No child in India shall be deprived of education because of hunger’ came into existence.  Akshaya Patra’s mid-day meal scheme which was kicked off with just 1,500 school children, at present, covers over 1.4 million Government school students in India.

This NGO in India, through all these years, has been working hard to ensure that underserved school children get all the calories, proteins, minerals and vitamins needed to excel in studies and succeed in life. Akshaya Patra’s mid-day meal provides all the necessary nutrition needed for a healthy growth in childhood.

The organisation owes a large part of its success to its donors. The mission of The Akshaya Patra Foundation, now, is to reach out to 5 million children by the year 2020.

Today’s children are tomorrow’s citizens. Your contribution can help us build a healthy and smart society. To support out the programme, join us and give your contribution to feed more children and to remove hunger among children.

To know more how you can be part of Akshaya Patra, visit Get Involve.