Akshaya Patra

Akshaya Patra is the free midday meal scheme in Karnataka.

This is the daily midday meal scheme for underprivileged kids.

The kitchen from the outside -
a three-storey building which uses Gravity Flow Mechanism developed in-house
by our team. Each kitchen has the capacity to cook between 50 000 to 100 000
mid-day meals per day. Costing approximately 9 crores to set up, they are built with funds from public donations.

The kitchen from the inside,
consisting of rice cauldrons each of which
cooks up to 110kg of rice in 20 minutes.
Sambar cauldrons cook up to 1200
litres of sambar in two hours.

It is washed thoroughly on the 2nd floor

Washed rice is sent down the chute to the
1st floor

                                  

Rice pours down into steam heated cauldrons
for cooking. The entire cooking process
takes place on the 1st floor

                                  

Super heated steam is used
to cook food instead of flame.

                                  

When cooking is finished, it is
loaded into trolleys

                                 

Cooked rice is sent down the chute
to the ground floor

                                  

It flows down the pipe into containers

                                  

Piping hot rice on its way to being
loaded into food vans. Around
6000 kilosof rice are cooked daily
in each kitchen.

                                  

Food materials in Kitchen

                                  

Stock in the kitchen

                                  

Washed dal and vegetables flows
down the chute into sambar cauldron on
the 1st floor.

                                  

Vegetables and dal ready to be cooked

                                  

Sambar being cooked on the first floor

                                  

Cooked sambar is packed and sent to the
food vans to be loaded.

                                  

Chapati dough is mixed

                                  

Heavy rollers flatten the dough into
thin sheets

                                  

Dough is cut into the classic round shape

                                  

Making chapatti

                                  

Collecting all the chapattis

                                  

Transporting akshayapatra food through bus

                                  

Happy Kids

                                  

Students benifited from akshayapatra

Birth of The Akshaya Patra Foundation 

The history of our Foundation starts with a story of compassion.

Looking out of a window one day in Mayapur, a village near Calcutta , His Divine Grace A.C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

saw a group of children fighting with street dogs over scraps of food. From this simple, yet heart breaking incident,

came the determination that:  No one within a ten mile radius of our center should go hungry.

It is his inspiration which helped us to create23 The Akshaya Patra Foundation as it is today. 

They began this initiative with the vision that “No child in India shall be deprived of education because of hunger.”

In June 2000, they started our mid-day meal program in Bangalore by feeding 1500 children in 5 schools.

At that time there was no State run school meal program in Karnataka.

Within a few short weeks they had received hundreds of requests from teachers who expressed the dire need of such a scheme.

This over whelming response was the impetus for the growth of The Akshaya Patra Foundation.

Growth of The Akshaya Patra Foundation

In November 28, 2001 the Supreme Court of India passed an order which mandated that: "Cooked mid-day meal is to be provided

in all the government and government-aided primary schools in all the states."

Akshaya Patra was called in, to give testimonies to the Supreme Court in order to implement the mandate.

By the time the Ministry of Human Resource Development (Department of School Health and Education)

extended its support to this noble cause in 2003, Akshaya Patra was already reaching out to 49,432 underprivileged children

through the support of our donors. With the partnership of the Government of India & various State governments, as well as the

generosity of thousands of their supporters, they have grown from a small endeavor to a mammoth force that stretches across the country.

Now they are reaching out to over 1.2 million children everyday.

For 10 years, they have been an international charity for children that has worked to transform a vision into a reality.