Tuesday 16 October 2012

2012 World Food Day - Food for Education | October 16,2012

World Food Day was declared by UN in 1945 to be observed on 16th of October every year. With an important goal of spreading awareness on issues behind poverty and hunger, every year UN adopts a theme for this day in order to highlight the areas that needs for action to provide a resolve to the situation related to poverty and hunger.

The theme for the current year being “agricultural cooperatives – key to feeding the world” recognizing the role agricultural cooperatives play in improving food security and contributing to the eradication of hunger. An FAO document gives a complete account of how cooperatives contribute and their importance. Please click the link for same.

Adopting many measures as per the themes such as ‘food and nutrition’, ‘the right to food’, ‘united against hunger’ are quintessential for India due to the hunger crisis in the country. 2011 hunger statistics declare India in state of emergency yet again and India’s score is same as it was in 1996, even though there has been overall decline, decline itself is marginal. There are many initiatives adopted by the government and by philanthropic organization in India to over come the issue.  However, this obviously is not sufficient.

Akshaya Patra started in 2000 with a simple thought that children must get education and hungry children cannot really focus on education and it works against physical and mental abilities of the child to sit in classroom when hungry. It was decided that Akshaya Patra will feed children in schools thus attracting more children to school and retaining them in school through regular one hot nutritious meal on every school day.

Today Akshaya Patra serves mid-day-meals to over 1.3 million children and envisions feeding 5 million children every day by 2020.

We really wish that many more initiatives are taken up by the government and every individual in the society as it is our social responsibility to ensure that our fellow men have their rights assured. We extend our hands to organizations that need support in running services similar to Akshaya Patra.

We really hope that we as a nation see a light of the day when hunger has been eradicated in India and we hope that our service is not even required by 2030!!

Join such causes, support Akshaya Patra and be the catalyst.  Donate today and do your bit on World Food Day!!

Akshaya Patra Twitter and Akshaya Patra Facebook

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