Vision
No child in India shall be deprived of education because of hunger
Mission
To feed 5 million children each day by 2025
At Akshaya Patra, we dream of a world where families won’t have to choose between food and education for their children. A wholesome meal prompts children, especially girls, to stay out of the workforce and attend school thereby addressing both classroom hunger and education. With the continued kindness of donors and supporters, Akshaya Patra will meet its goal to serve more children throughout India.
History
Compassionate Beginnings
In 2000 the ISKCON Temple cooked and delivered meals to 1,500 students in five government schools in the surrounding community. Soon after, headmasters of these schools reported that the program resulted in increased attendance and marked improvement in student health and academic performance.
As news of the program spread, the temple received hundreds of requests from other schools wondering how they might participate in the program. Temple leaders were extremely pleased with the program’s success, but also realized that demand vastly out-paced their capacity to supply hand-cooked meals to everyone in need.
The challenge of making the temple’s midday meal program more efficient was taken up by Madhu Pandit Dasa, a graduate of IIT-Bombay’s Civil Engineering program. Madhu Pandit Dasa designed the first centralized and fully mechanized kitchen that was able to produce more than 100,000 high-quality meals in 5 hours, without sacrificing the wholesome quality of the food.
Since then, Akshaya Patra has expanded to 55 centralized kitchens in 12 states and 2 Union Territories in India, and feeds over 1.8 million children per day.
Conferred the Gold Shield Award for 7 consecutive years by ICAI (Institute of Chartered Accountants of India) for transparency in accounting. The only NGO in India to be in the ICAI Hall of Fame.
