By Neel Achary
The Akshaya Patra Foundation has always been mindful of the role of food assistance in humanitarian efforts. Since its inception, the Foundation has strived to utilise its existing kitchen infrastructure and resources to undertake national emergency food assistance in the event of natural disasters—from Uttar Pradesh to Tamil Nadu and Gujarat to Assam.
Since March 2020, Akshaya Patra has cumulatively served over 12.1 crore meals to vulnerable populations in 18 states and two union territories as part of its COVID-19 relief feeding endeavour. By working with the Government, donors and volunteers, the Foundation has extended food and nutrition support to affected populations to uphold their health during a global pandemic.
Akshaya Patra’s ability to undertake disaster relief feeding operations on a large scale is the result of its strategic investment in infrastructures and resources, the synergy of its well-established public-private partnership model, its far-reaching network of kitchens, dedicated and trained staff, proactive support of donors and partners and its ability to mobilise volunteers. All these aspects have been pivotal to its efforts to go beyond the implementation of the Government of India’s school feeding programme, the Mid-Day Meal (MDM) Scheme, to undertake relief feeding in various locations over the last 20 years.
What began as a school lunch programme in 2000 with the feeding of 1500 children in five schools in Bengaluru, Karnataka, has now evolved into a food security net for over 1.8 million children across 12 states and two union territories. The Foundation’s ability to scale its operations was enabled by its extensive network of structured kitchen units, which help in large-scale feeding while prioritising the safe handling, preparation and delivery of the food. And as the scale increased, so did the impetus to make national food security a priority.
Akshaya Patra has used its kitchen infrastructure to aid subsidised feeding programmes and relief feeding initiatives across the country. However, most of these efforts have been region-specific. But with the advent of a pandemic that brought the nation to a grinding and abrupt halt, Akshaya Patra reoriented its kitchens to provide food relief on a national scale to socio-economically challenged communities, daily-wage earners, industrial workers, labourers at construction sites and rough sleepers.
Food was prepared in the Foundation’s kitchens and delivered to centres assigned by the authorities, from which it is then served to people in need. Akshaya Patra also established ration packaging centres in various locations across the country where food relief kits are packed with essential groceries, keeping in mind the local taste palate. Each kit contains sufficient dry ration to cook 42 or 28 meals. In states like Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand, where the Foundation is currently working on setting up centralised kitchen infrastructure, existing decentralised structures and resources were used to distribute food relief kits to vulnerable individuals. In states where the organisation does not have existing kitchen infrastructure, relief feeding was extended from the nearest kitchen in the neighbouring state. The Foundation has served over 60 million cooked meals and 10.19 lakh food relief kits (amounting to 41 million meal servings) as of March 31, 2021.
Acutely aware that school closures could impact the educational needs of MDM beneficiaries, the Foundation developed the Happiness Kit, a one-of-its-kind box of essential groceries and educational supplies. Each box is designed to focus on nutrition as well as hygiene and education, with their contents ranging from dry ration to hygiene products (such as toothbrush, toothpaste, sanitary pads for girls, etc.) and learning material (such as activity books, crayons, etc.). As of March 31, 2021, 9.63 lakh kits have been distributed to the Foundation’s MDM beneficiaries in more than 35 locations across the country.
Akshaya Patra remains committed to the cause of providing nutritional security to vulnerable communities in the midst of this global pandemic and will continue in this endeavour by drawing upon the synergetic efforts of all the stakeholders in the Foundation’s public-private partnership for COVID relief.
