Wednesday 24 June 2015

Support Akshaya Patra Jaipur in feeding children

Through the Akshaya Patra Foundation school feeding programme, today the Akshaya Patra Jaipur unit is feeding 92,763 children across 1,081 government as well as government aided schools. To make this mid day meal scheme Rajasthan possible, the foundation has set up four kitchens in the state. Jodhpur, Nathdwara, Baran and Jaipur are the places where the kitchen has been set up. All over India, the organization has 24 kitchen units across 10 states feeding 1.4 million children on every working day. The mid-day meal programme has made the foundation’s vision “No Child in India shall be deprived of education because of hunger” to reality. The organization has a mission to provide school lunch to 5 million children by 2020.

The kitchen of the Akshaya Patra Jaipur has been ISO 22000:2005 certified. To maintain the excellent quality in the food the foundation provides, the kitchen complies with the standards set for Food Safety Management Systems by ISO, the International Organisation for Standardisation, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. One of the main priorities to the organization is the food quality. So far, the NGO has 10 of its kitchen ISO certified and the rest are in the process of getting the certification. In order to appeal the local tastes the kitchens have modified the mid day meal scheme Rajasthan menu along with the maintenance of excellent hygiene food. The usual food menu in this part of the region includes rice, Indian flatbread (roti), lentils curry (dal), savoury vegetable dishes, and a rice cooked in a seasonal broth (pulao).

The Akshaya Patra Foundation follows centralized model and decentralized model kitchens. The implementation of these kitchens depends on the certain factors like road connectivity, infrastructure and others. The Akshaya Patra Jaipur has the centralized kitchen. Nathdwara and Jodhpur also follows the same model. The centralized kitchens are machine intensive units that are capable of undertaking cooking in large quantities. The human contact with the food is very less in this model, due to the mechanized nature. This will maintain high quality and hygiene food with no compromise. This kind of kitchens is capable of producing 100,000 meals in a less time. The organization has also its unit in Baran and this unit follows decentralized kitchen model. The region is limited road connectivity and infrastructure. So with the help of local volunteers, the foundation implemented the programme in these remote regions. It is the first decentralized kitchen under the organization and it completed its 10 years of operation by providing the livelihood to thousands of children with school lunch programme.

The Akshaya Patra Foundation founded and started its operation in the year 2000 and has the reach of just 1,500 children across 5 schools of Bengaluru. In the past 15 years with its vision and mission along with the support of volunteer donors, the foundation has taken strides. To make every child not to suffer from hunger, there is still a long way to achieve that. Support the Akshaya Patra Jaipur kitchen, and help eliminate classroom hunger by making a donation and contribution to the programme.

The Akshaya Patra Foundation, NGO in India has implemented the mid-day meal scheme to feed the future of India. The organization is feeding the government school children of 24 locations across 10 states in India.