Friday, July 19, 2013

Akshaya Patra Beneficiary Success Story from Vadodara


Akshaya Patra in Gujarat : Sheetal Chawla, a student of Pragati Vidyalaya, Bhayli has the knack of hiding the tale of an unforeseen life event which affected her academically too. Sheetal comes from a humble background. A creative child who loves to draw Mehendi on others’ hands and she is very fond of dancing too. She is a bright student in her academics too.

At a tender age Sheetal came across probably the most uncertain event in her life when her father suffered from high BP and a mild heart attack. After struggling for two months, he breathed his last in March 2011. With this irrecoverable loss, Sheetal also lost a whole academic year as she could not appear for her annual examination, the first date of which coincided with the date when her father passed away. This life changing event of Sheetal gets tactfully hidden behind her sparkling eyes.

To support her family, Bharati Behn- Sheetal’s mother began to work as domestic help in a few houses. Now, she is the only earning member in the family. But, this has not put a pause in the education of either Sheetal or her brother Piyush. Bharati Behn with her little earnings is managing to educate both her children. Sheetal’s brother is studying in the 10th Standard. He aims to do his ITI Diploma.

As Bharati Behn’s day starts as early as 6 a.m., Sheetal and her brother’s just has a glass of milk for their breakfast. Sheetal thus looks forward to having the freshly cooked meal of Akshaya Patra which is served before noon between 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sheetal is a Akshaya Patra beneficiary and she goes on to s ay, “Akshaya Patra mid day meal is a boon to families like ours, where it is difficult to have such a nutritious hot meal every day”. A thoughtful child, she extends a special thanks to all the ‘Bhais’ (brothers) and Behns (sisters) of Akshaya Patra for their everyday support.

Join Akshaya Patra and get involved in changing the lives of many children like Sheetal. Let’s together change the future in a constructive way. Feed the Children today!!!

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Karnataka NGO Provides Mid Day Meals For School Children

The Akshaya Patra Foundation was started in June 2000 in Bangalore. This Foundation implements the mid day meal programme with the mission of feeding 5 million children by 2020. It drives all its work towards its vision of “No child in India shall be deprived of education because of hunger”. Though it’s primary cause is to provide mid day meal to Government schools, it emphasises equally on education of the children also. The reason being this it is looking forward to expand its reach to more and more parts of the country.

Currently, Akshaya Patra is feeding children in 19 locations of 9 States of India. Every day it feeds 1.3 million children in more than 9000 Government schools. This feeding programme has had many positive impacts like increase in school enrolment, improved attendance, improved concentration and performance of children, and decreased school drop-out rate.