Akshaya Patra Foundation

“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 stray dogs over scraps of food. From this simple, yet heart-breaking incident was born a determination that no child within a radius of ten miles from our centre should go hungry.”

His inspiring resolve led to the vision: "No child in India shall be deprived of education because of hunger."  That resolve was the beginning of Akshaya Patra Mid-Day Meal Program in June 2000. 1,500 children in five government schools in Bengaluru, Karnataka were the recipients of those meals. The rest is history with numerous challenges, hurdles, resolutions, and plans for marching ahead.

With extensive public-private partnerships, Akshaya Patra Foundation today manages the world’s largest Mid-Day Meal Program for school children in resource-poor settings.  Its management combines the best of human resources, technology, nutrition, and delivery systems.

Akshaya Patra reaches out to 17,61,734 children in 38 kitchens across 12 states of India, providing them with freshly cooked meal on all school days. Currently, we implement the mid-day meal program in 14,314 schools of the country, with plans to increase that number to hundreds more.