Why CSR with Akshaya Patra?

 

Companies today have started to realise the long term importance of adopting a cohesive corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy. To underline this, section 135 of The Companies Act, 2013 has made it mandatory that ‘every company with a net worth of INR 500 crores or more, and a turnover of INR 1000 crores or more, or a net profit of INR five crores or more’, must spend a minimum of two per cent of their net profits of the last three years on CSR.

The Act outlines the avenues in which companies can invest their CSR budgets.  These are poverty deduction and eradicating hunger, education, empowering women and promoting gender equality, environmental sustainability and several other core focus areas. Out of these, the first two are directly in line with the first and second of the Millenium Development Goals, and are also completely in tune with the mission and vision of The Akshaya Patra Foundation.

The Akshaya Patra Foundation conducts one of the world’s largest school feeding programmes, and currently feeds 1.4 million children, across 23 locations in 9 states of India every day. By providing the tasty, nutritious mid-day meal to the children, Akshaya Patra provides an incentive for children to attend school, get educated and steer away from the perils of child labour. Through the mid-day meal school enrolments have increased, classroom attendance and concentration have been on the rise, and the school drop-our rates have declined.

Addressing some of the other areas specified by Section 135, The Akshaya Patra Foundation also works for the empowerment of women and promoting gender equality, by providing employment opportunities to women in all the locations. This has helped provide them with economic independence, as well as boost their self-esteem and confidence greatly.

The Akshaya Patra Foundation also works toward environmental sustainability by setting up biogas plants, undertaking rain water harvesting and adopting numerous other methods to reduce its carbon footprint on the planet.

Akshaya Patra’s focus on eliminating classroom hunger, providing education and even looking beyond it to other areas of development, make the Foundation the ideal partner for corporate social responsibility. To join with Akshaya Patra for your CSR plan, click http://www.akshayapatra.org/csr-opportunities

Follow us: @AkshayaPatra on Twitter | TheAkshayapatraFoundation on Facebook |

 @AkshayaPatraFoundation on Rediff