Sponsor a Hungry Child this Anti-Child Labour Day

“If we want to develop our country we should first develop a bright future for children”

Child Labour is an injustice done to the children depriving them of their basic right to learn, play and enjoy childhood. The children have to do menial jobs for meagre income for a longer duration without any complaint to satisfy their hunger.

Anti-Child Labour Day in India is observed every year on April 30 which falls a day before Labour Day. Unfortunately, India has the highest number of child labourers in the world. There are 11.29 million child labourers in India, which constitutes 1.34 per cent of the total population of the country. Though anti-child labour laws were amended by the Government through Child Labour Act 1986, which enforces a ban on employment of children under the age of 14, still children are victims of child abuse and exploitation.

Though a child craves to go to school and enjoy studying and playing with friends, he can’t pursue his education due to lack of food and finance. When hunger dominates, he is ready to forgo school and prefer to work for a square meal. Hence the child ends up as labourer at the prime of his innocence; when he is supposed to enjoy childhood.

Akshaya Patra on realising the link between child labour and hunger serves mid-day meals to children in Government schools under the Government’s Mid-day Meal Scheme. The organisation implements the scheme to eliminate classroom hunger and bring children back to schools opening to them the gates of progress. Aiming to end hunger and promote education the organisation works tirelessly to serve nutritious food every day to feed the hungry children in India and promote education which eventually will free children from child labour.

Akshaya Patra calls upon all of us, as responsible citizens, to help feed the hungry children by providing charity or sponsoring a child through the organisations mid-day meal scheme. Fifteen years of tireless efforts has increased the Foundation’s reach to 25 locations and providing food to 1.5 million children in India. This had led to increased enrolment in schools, sustained attendance and increased nutritious health of children.

Hunger-free education is the only solution to end child labour, school is the best place for a child to spend his life and pen is the best instrument to work with. It’s our duty to ask a child to ‘learn’ and ‘not earn.’ Child labour is never a solution to end the social disease of poverty but it perpetuates poverty rather than irradiating poverty.

To give every child a life filled with colours, let us join hands with Akshaya Patra in its mid-day meal scheme to feed the hungry children on this Anti-Child Labour Day.

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Akshaya Patra Kitchens in Uttar Pradesh

In a state battling malnutrition, where the Government—even though willing to do something—is bogged down by lack of resources, NGOs have a crucial role to play when it comes to socioeconomic development. The tie-up between Akshaya Patra and the State Government to serve mid-day meals in Uttar Pradesh is an example for others to follow.

Akshaya Patra has become a familiar name in several parts of the country; courtesy, the nutritious meals it serves to school children as a part of the Mid-day Meal Programme—arguable the largest programme of its kind in the world. For this, the organisation has got into a tie-up with ten state governments across the country, including that of the state of Karnataka, where it all began in 2001.

Akshaya Patra began with 1,500 children in 2001. The ‘will’ was always there; so it was a matter of time before the organisation started expanding reaching as far as Assam in East, Gujarat in West, and Uttar Pradesh in North. Of the 22 centralised kitchen units The Akshaya Patra Foundation (TAPF) runs in the country, two are located in the state of Uttar Pradesh: one in Vrindavan and the other in Lucknow.

The Vrindavan kitchen is among one of the earliest kitchens the Foundation started. It was opened in August 2004, effectively making Uttar Pradesh only the second state where the NGO had expanded its operations. It was ISO 22000:2005 certified in 2008. As of 2015, this kitchen serves 166,078 children of 1,870 schools in its catchment area.

Its second kitchen in Uttar Pradesh was set up by the NGO in Lucknow just over a year ago. It was inaugurated on 15th March, 2015, by the Chief Minister of the state, Shri Akhilesh Yadav. It serves 11,373 children of 110 schools in and around the city of Lucknow. Together, the two kitchens feed 177,451 children of the state’s government schools.

Watch the video of CM of UP, Akhilesh Yadav inaugurates Akshaya Patra Kitchen in Lucknow:

Unlike the Akshaya Patra kitchens in South, which follow a rice-based diet, the two kitchens in Uttar Pradesh follow a wheat-based diet with roti as the staple component of the meals served. Besides roti, these kitchens also serve khichdi, dal, vegetables, etc. The aim is to provide stipulated calories and protein to children.

After Vrindavan and Lucknow, the State Government is expected to provide mid-day meal in Uttar Pradesh's other cities such as Kanauj, Varanasi, Kanpur, etc.

Even Akshaya Patra intends to expand to other parts of the country in a bid to reach out to more children. That shouldn’t really come as a surprise, considering that the NGO aims to reach 5 million children by 2020 and more importantly, eliminate classroom hunger. You can play a crucial role in the NGO’s pursuit of 5 million children by contributing.

When you donate to feed children in need, you are basically ensuring that they don’t have to work to support their family. Instead, they can concentrate on schooling as education is the way out of poverty for most of these children.

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