Just as American children are served a lunch at school, the children of India receive a hot meal every day in the school. The charitable organization, AkshayaPatra is a non profit that serves meals in the schools that are government schools. Therefore there is no discrimination or bias due to color, gender, religion, or background.



Food for education is the motto they use. This is due to the feeling that education is vital to breaking the cycle of hunger. By making sure that school is where they receive the free meal for the day, they are promoting the thought of staying in school and helping them to see that education is important.

The PPP (Public Private Partnership) is the shining example of a successful meal program with the cooperation of the governments of India. This is the largest lunch feeding program in the world. Feeding from a few thousand, depending upon the size of the school, to millions this is the premiere food for education program that is saving these children from starvation.

The Governor of Karnataka and the Department of Education have conducted studies on their own to see what type of results they would get from the school lunch program. The study showed positive effects when it came to the children paying more attention and an overall improvement in their academic achievement.

They had already conducted studies to see if the meals had an impact on the attendance of the students and were proud to announce that it did. The benefits of what this charitable organization has done are truly one of a handful of miracles. The food for education program has been a huge success.

The kitchens used for the AkshayaPatra's food programs are cooked by women of the villages. A group of women were picked from each village, trained to be able to cook the meals, taught the basics of health, sanitation, nutrition, and preparing meals. They were given the opportunity to have gainful employment and help the children of the villages as well.

The food for education program was well under way and the kitchens were established. They had rethought a little because a centralized kitchen was not a probable idea. The decentralized kitchen was used as an alternative for the food. This was an idea that was conceived and put into use by the charitable organization. The food is delivered to the schools using special vehicles that are heated, insulated, and totally dust-free.

This idea has been such a huge success that Harvard Business School has decided to use the AkshayaPatra as part of their studies. The fact that the Foundation has put together a kitchen that can make 1,00,000 meals in less than 6 hours, although they do not at the present use this many.

Not only does this program help the children but the program was expanded to feed pregnant women and children which is in turn helping these children to get off to a good start.