The Akshaya Patra Foundation started in 200 by feeding 1500 students across 5 schools in Bangalore. Today, we feed over 1,291,064 underprivileged students across 18 locations in 8 states. By 2020, our projection is to feed 5 million school children in India everyday.
1. WE ARE THE LARGEST NGO RUN SCHOOL MEAL PROGRAMME IN THE WORLD
Our intelligently designed automated kitchens are engineered to ensure maximum hygiene in all centralized Akshaya Patra centers where we provide nutritious meals prepared in less than 6 hours. Extensive mechanization has brought about standardization, high-quality and cost-effectiveness throughout our work, and over the last 10 years we have worked to become a scaleable and innovative organization.
2. ACADEMIC STUDIES APPLAUD AKSHAYA PATRA's WORK!
Academic studies have continually shown that the work Akshaya Patra Foundation is doing has helped increase attendance rates and school enrollment. A study by AC Nielsen in 2006 commended the standard of food provided by The Akshaya Patra Foundation while praising the impact our work was having on attendance within schools. High nutritious content was helping enhance learning while reducing drop-out rates.
Harvard Business School conducted a study on our operations and has now included it as part of their MBA curriculum as a case study on precision and time management. Based on our engineered kitchens, which prepare over 100,000 meals in six hours, the study examines effective innovation in social development.
Furthermore, the Department of Education for the State Government of Karnataka recently conducted an independent study on the impact of our programme in the schools we work with. The study reported that 91.8% of the teachers felt that the attention of the students in the class has improved, 99.61% of the students felt that they could pay better attention, and 93.8% of the teachers felt that there was an overall academic improvement in the students
3. INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION
Through its short history The Akshaya Patra Foundation has continually received international recognition in a variety of forms. Recently, the US Congressional Hunger Centre (CHC) selected The Akshaya Patra Foundation, out of 35 social organizations from around the world, as its International Fellow. Furthermore we won the Microsoft Education Award in 2009 and we were invited to the World Economic Forum to share our experiences for THE PROJECT HUNGER in Africa.
Finally, American President Barack Obama has applauded the achievements of The Akshaya Patra Foundation: Click here to view the letter from Barack Obama
