Akshaya Patra Foundation holding up the Dreams of Parents

Importance of education is well known to everybody. Though It is an established fact in the minds of common people that education gives them opportunity to grow and rise up in life, some of the parents find it difficult to educate their children because of their meagre sources. There are many such parents who have an ardent desire of educating their children so that they can live a good and prosperous life. But their limited resources seem to be an obstacle in their dream of educating their children; especially in those cases where it is difficult to arrange even for two square meals.

Akshaya Patra is supporting the dreams of such children by providing mid- day meal to government and government aided school children. It is serving hot and tasty mid- day meal to 1.3 million in 18 locations across 8 States. It is a single meal but it provides support to many families who find it difficult to arrange for nutritious meal for children. They happily send their children to school thinking that the school will not only educate them but will take care of their hunger and nutrition also.To some extent their burden is shaded off. In this way Aksahya Patra comes as a saviour of their dreams of educating their children.

This exactly relates to Nadan’s Mother. Nadan , a 12 year old young boy studying in class 5 of Government Primary school, Mahalaxmi Puram , Bangalore. His mother keeps visiting the school and talks to the teachers regarding her child’s education. She takes deep interest as she is aware that education can secure a bright future for her children. Nandan has two other siblings- one sister and one brother. His father is a construction labour who struggles to make ends meet for his family of five. Nandan’s mother finds it difficult to take care of the nominal expenses of the children, let go the expense on education. But she is determined to educate her children. So she decided to put Nandan in a government school. Nandan has heard his mother saying that it is difficult for me to put Nadan in any school other than the government school where one meal is also provided.

Nandan loves the meal served by Akshaya Patra. Like many other children Nandan, doesn’t like to eat vegetables. So he says there are a lot of vegetables in the curry served by Akshaya Patra as part of the mid-day meal programme. But then, his teachers in school and mother at home tell him the importance of eating vegetables and insist on having the same. According to the teachers, Nandan is a very quite happy and loving child. Desire of her mother, motivation of teachers and support of Akshaya Patra is giving Nadan a basic foundation of health and education and preparing him for a bright future.