The Akshaya Patra Foundation USA has been awarded a $100,000-grant through Cummings Foundation’s “$100K for 100” program for school meal program in Mangalore, it was announced last week.
Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run school meal program, is one of the 100 nonprofits to receive grants of $100,000 each. It was chosen from 479 applicants, during a competitive review process.
Akshaya Patra provides nutritious school meals to 1.5 million children in 11,501 schools across 10 states in India every day. Akshaya Patra USA supports this mission by raising funds and awareness for the school meal program.
Representing Akshaya Patra USA, Emily Rosenbaum, CEO, and Ankita Narula, director of development, Northeast, were expected to join approximately 300 other guests June 9 at Trade Center in Woburn, Massachusetts to celebrate the $10 million infusion into Greater Boston’s nonprofit sector.
“This grant will provide a tremendous boost to a key kitchen building project in Mangalore, India,” Rosenbaum said. “The 50,000 children annually who will receive hot, nutritious meals at school daily in Mangalore for decades to come will be the living legacy for the importance of this award,” she said.
She noted that more than 30 percent of the malnourished children in the world live in India, and these meals in school that allow children from even the poorest families to attend school, rather than work, simultaneously reduce childhood malnutrition and pave the way for better economic opportunities for these students and their families.
The Cummings Grant will support the building of a new centralized kitchen in Mangalore. Akshaya Patra’s centralized kitchen produces fresh, nutritious meals to government schools from its state-of-the-art centralized kitchen facilities. Akshaya Patra’s founders used their own knowledge of engineering to design immense mechanized kitchen facilities many of which are capable of preparing meals for 100,000 plus children every day. Akshaya Patra’s custom chapatti machines can bake 60,000 chapattis in five hours and easy-tilt cauldrons can produce 1,200 liters of rice or sambar in just two hours.
These technological innovations optimize quality and minimize cost, time and labor to ensure that the meals prepared are safe, fresh, and nutritious. All of Akshaya Patra’s kitchens meet the highest standards of safety and efficiency, and ten of Akshaya Patra’s kitchens have already been certified as FSMS ISO 22000:2005 compliant.
Established in 2000, Akshaya Patra USA began by serving 1,500 in five schools in Bangalore.
Source: News India Times