No child shall be deprived of education because of hunger.
Imagine feeding 35 Fenway Park’s full of hungry people, every day… Impossible? Not for The Akshaya Patra Foundation
On May 12 Akshaya Patra USA’s Boston Chapter held their annual Food for Education Benefit Gala at the Taj Hotel, an event Chitika was proud to sponsor. The benefit brought together individuals who are passionate about eradicating hunger and promoting education in India, the cornerstones of the Akshaya Patra Foundation.
Food For Education started with a story of compassion and the belief that no child in India should be deprived of education because of hunger. As the Foundation says, “Hungry children can’t learn. But plentiful nutrition in schools can convert a desperate child into an educated adult – one who can then turn around and help pull their community out of poverty.”
With the launch of Food for Education in 2000, Akshaya Patra has been successful in combining good management, innovative technology and smart engineering to deliver school lunch at a fraction of the cost of similar programs in other parts of the world.
Thanks to the vision of The Akshaya Patra Founders, the passion of the people executing the program on the ground and active supporters who believe in the program and work to empower others to join in, Food For Education currently distributes freshly cooked, healthy meals daily to 1.3 million underprivileged children in 8,000 government schools.
Chitika CEO, Venkat Kolluri, recently met with Dr. Desh Deshpande, Chairman of The Akshaya Patra Foundation’s US Chapter, to talk about the program. At the end of the meeting Desh challenged him and everyone else in attendance to go home and share the story of the Food for Education program with three friends. Approaching this challenge using the Foundation’s model of scalablity, Venkat decided rather than tell three friends– why not tell 300? With the help of Team Chitika, we created “empower” gift bags for all Gala attendees, each containing three Patra’s (never ending bowls), filled with information on the Foundation and their mission, to distribute outside of the event, empowering others to take action.
Now we are challenging the Chitika Community. Take a moment to learn about Food for Education by watching this video and then, share it with three friends or (300 friends) in your social networks. Let’s work together to help eradicate hunger and promote education in India.
“Our program is not just about providing food,” says Madhu Pandit Das, chairman of the Akshaya Patra Foundation. “It is about providing opportunities for children from economically challenged backgrounds to get a good education and thereby realize their true potential.” Akshaya Patra is the world’s largest non-governmental organization (NGO) school meal program, according to the Limca Book of Records.