Fuelling The Dreams of Children

The Akshaya Patra Foundation’s initiative ‘Giving Every Dream a Chance’ aims to provide mentorship programme for its mid-day meal beneficiaries. The pilot project has been successful in conducting mentorship programme for three Akshaya Patra’s mid-day meal beneficiaries which eventually helped them recognize their dreams and polish their skills.

Read more at: blog.akshayapatra.org/fuelling-the-dreams-of-children

How the Adoption of Kaizen is Helping Akshaya Patra

The fact that Akshaya Patra’s Hubballi kitchen featured in the NGCs Mega Kitchens of India alongside the likes of TajSATS Air Catering Ltd., speaks volumes about its magnanimity. This particular kitchen has the capacity to prepare meals for over 200,000 children in approximately four hours. And this, mind you, is just one of the 22 centralised kitchens the Foundation operates across India … feeding over 1.5 million children as a part of the Mid-day Meal Programme in 11,360 schools every single day.

If Akshaya Patra has been able to pull off this task, it’s largely because of the tremendous efforts put in by each of the stakeholder involved, right from its employees to donors. Also playing a crucial role in its success is the ability to adapt and evolve. The organisation has adopted kaizen wherever possible with the aim to achieve overall excellence.

What is Kaizen All About?

In Japanese, kaizen means improvement or simply put, changing for better. The concept has become popular world over as one of the key attributes of an organisation’s long-term strategy. It is based on the belief that several small changes—over the course of time—help in achieving big results.

Akshaya Patra’s Kaizen Initiatives

Before Kaizen Technique

After kaizen Technique

Kaizen techniques have been put to use in various sectors, including government, health care, banking, and even NGOs. In fact, at Akshaya Patra, kaizens are adopted at various levels of operations to facilitate efficient use of resources, make the task cost effective, save time, and produce better results. When you serve mid-day meals to over 1.5 million children, it goes without saying that it’s imperative that your kitchen technology is at its efficient best—kaizens help Akshaya Patra pull off the task.

As a part of kaizen initiative, Akshaya Patra's Hubballi and Vasanthapura kitchens have started cooking rice with starch instead of draining it. In what can be considered an apt example of kaizen for effective use of resources, this helps these kitchens save around 11,000 and 6,000 litres of water respectively.

As for saving time, the preparation time for a single batch of rice which was 20 – 22 minutes before this kaizen method was implemented, has now been reduced to 15 – 19 minutes. Thus, 30 – 40 minutes are saved every day. Now half an hour may not seem like a lot of time, but consider the fact that mid-day meals are prepared in four hours of so, and you realise how important these 30 – 40 minutes are.

It’s also worth noting that the retention of starch adds to the nutritional content of the rice.

Kaizen initiatives have helped Akshaya Patra make the most of resources at its disposal elsewhere as well. In Guwahati, Assam, for instance, route analysis has helped in reducing the distance covered and diesel consumed by delivery vans, thus helping in saving time and making efficient use of resources.

Simple things like a design modification as a part of which the flat bottom of a silo at Surat kitchen was turned into conical bottom, replacing plastic wipers with durable wipers made of stainless steel, or—for that matter—introducing cauldrons with safety locks has helped Akshaya Patra kitchens make the task of preparing and delivering mid-day meals much more effective.

Like we mentioned earlier, kaizen is all about tweaking several small things to bring about a big overall change and Akshaya Patra has several examples of such initiatives. Not surprising then, is the fact that the Foundation has scaled up to feed over 1.5 million children across ten states since its inception and plans to reach 5 million children by 2020.

Now, that’s a goal that won’t be possible with kaizens alone. Other stakeholders will also have to pitch in. Regardless of whether you are an individual or organisation, one simple way to help is to donate to the NGO. In doing so, you will ensure that Akshaya Patra reaches more children … nurtures more dreams.

Fighting Child Hunger and Improving Education

Food is one of the essentials needed to survive on this earth. However, all of us are not lucky enough to receive a sufficient supply due to many reasons.  It is shocking to know that about 870 million people in the world struggle for a square meal every day due to extreme poverty.

When we talk about hunger children always come at the forefront as they are the worst affected. Lack of food or nutrition during the early stages of growth can lead to several health problems and sometimes even to death. Here are some statistics on children and hunger:

• Malnutrition kills about 3.1 million children every year
• About 100 million children (one out of six) in developing countries fall below the recommended weight
• One in four children in the world is stunted
• About 66 million primary school children go hungry  to school 

Measures have been taken to bring these numbers down and works by The World Food Programme (WFP), the largest anti-hunger agency of the UN in the world, have been quite inspiring. Interestingly, the agency feeds 80 million people in 75 countries every year.

From the past 54 years, the agency has been trying constantly to eliminate hunger and provide children an opportunity to attend school.  For this purpose, WFP supplies nutritious school meals to over 20 million children across the world.

The initiative has helped bring children back to school and bring hopes in millions of families. These meals, in a way, have also provided underprivileged children all the nutrition needed for growth.  The school meal programme has also given an opportunity to utilise the local resources and increase their demand.

Who else help school children in India - an overview:

• The Akshaya Patra Foundation: The NGO, at present feeds freshly cooked nutritious mid-day meals to over 1.4 million school children in 10 states.

• Annamrita:  The NGO feeds 1.2 million meals in eight states in India.

• Nanhi Kali:  The NGO  helps provide education to girls

• Smile Foundation: is dedicated to empower underprivileged children, youth and women. 

A 2013 report on school feeding programmes across 169 countries released by the World Food Project ranked India 12^th among lower middle income countries. During that time, India was feeding 114 million school children every day.

Some of the organisations which have helped improve lives of school children in India include:

These organisations have helped feed the hungry, provide education and empowerment and brought hope to millions of school children. However, there is a long way to go in eliminating classroom hunger altogether or providing education to all.

But, it is very much achievable. Just keep the good works going and soon ‘child hunger is gone’ will be a beautiful truth.

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.