Akshaya Patra participated in Code for India Hackathon

The Akshaya Patra Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation in India providing mid-day meal to children of Government schools. This not-for-profit organisation in India partnered with Code for India to address some of the challenges faced by the organisation in providing mid-day meal and find solutions for the same. A not-for-profit organisation itself, Code for India provides solutions to better the lives of economically marginalised by employing professionally certified engineers. For this, Code for India partners with various non-profits and NGOs to reach out to different sections of the society.

For Akshaya Patra, it was a successful partnership with Code for India during its Hackathon in October last year. This year too, the mid-day meal provider participated in the Hackathon where more than 200 engineering students. Apart from these students the event also saw active participation of enthusiasts from varied academic and professional backgrounds. With the sole aim of solving diverse challenges in India, the event went on round the clock for a day in Google campuses of the USA and India. Just not Akshaya Patra, other renowned establishments like Action for India, NASSCOM, World Bank Group Finances and Amnesty International were a part of the event.

Many engineers showed their interest in the set of challenges that were put forth by the mid-day meal provider. An application or software for delivery and route optimisation plus an application that could aid in calculating the quantity of mid-day meals required by each region by taking the historical data into consideration, so as to minimise and avoid shortage and wastage.  From a total of 70 groups of participants pertaining to different projects, two of Akshaya Patra projects were among the list of 15 shortlisted projects.

As a not-for-profit organisation catering to children in India, Akshaya Patra is sure to benefit from this partnership. These kinds of technology based events are definitely an advantage to the society in tackling various issues at an organisational level that gets disseminated to the entire society at large.

Follow us: @AkshayaPatra on Twitter | TheAkshayapatraFoundation on Facebook |
 @AkshayaPatraFoundation on Rediff