Making a contribution towards the cause of eliminating classroom hunger is easy through this NGO in Lucknow. Started in the year 2000, The Akshaya Patra Foundation provides the mid-day meal to Government school children with the vision that 'no child in India shall be deprived of education because of hunger'. It opened its latest kitchen in Lucknow in March 2015. This centralised kitchen operates utilising the donations for children to provide them with the tasty, nutritious daily mid-day meal.
There are two kinds of kitchens constructed to carry out the Foundation's operations. The organisation runs 22 centralised kitchens which are fitted with the latest machinery which allows for large scale cooking in a highly efficient manner with no compromise on the quality of food. In two locations (Baran and Nayagarh), the Foundation runs decentralised kitchens. These kitchens are run in locations where infrastructure and road connectivity poses a problem. These kitchens are run by local Women Self Help Groups trained by personnel from the Foundation.
The Akshaya Patra Foundation currently feeds over 1.4 million children in Government and Government aided schools every day. From this the NGO in Lucknow reaches out to 11,401 students across 109 schools on each working day. This highly mechanised kitchen is the second in Uttar Pradesh and was inaugurated by the state's Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. This is the 24th location in which Akshaya Patra has established its presence. In order to reach its mission of feeding 5 million children by 2020, the Foundation requires support through volunteering and donations for children, so that one day there will be enough food for every child in India.
Despite the exponential growth the Foundation has seen in the last 15 years, the priority of quality in the face of quantity has not been sacrificed. Each of the kitchens follows strict Food Safety Management Systems and other improvement strategies like Kaizen and Six Sigma to constantly improve the operations processes. Of these 24 locations, 11 kitchens are already ISO 22000:2005 certified, while the rest are under certification.
The NGO in Lucknow has been equipped with state-of-the-art kitchen machinery that is capable of cooking upto 60,000 rotis, 10,000 litres of dal, and 7 tonnes of cooked rice in just two hours. Given the scale of cooking that can be undertaken in this kitchen The Akshaya Patra Foundation intends to increase the number of children benefitting in this location to 100,000 in the coming months. In order to ensure sustained growth the Foundation will rely on donations for children, to fulfil its dream of providing unlimited food for education to the children of India. To help the Foundation eliminate classroom hunger in India, donate here.
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