Following the trajectory of The Akshaya Patra Foundation’s movement across the country, it pleased me greatly to see that the Foundation has opened yet another kitchen at Rourkela, in Odisha. The Akshaya Patra Foundation already has two kitchens in Odisha, one at Puri and the other at Nayagarh, but this third kitchen is expected to help fill in a much needed gap in the state.
Expected to feed 57,000 children across 431 schools in and around Rourkela, the funds for this kitchen have been generously donated by the Steel Authority of India (SAIL) Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP). SAIL, RSP which donated 8.24 crore to The Akshaya Patra Foundation as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme, has named this undertaking Project Akshaya Patra.
This move by SAIL also highlighted the huge difference that CSR can make to the issues facing this country, whether it is poverty, education, healthcare or economic growth.
The new kitchen is a modern, centralised kitchen at Sector 7, equipped with boilers, rice cleaning machines, cold storage, custom-made utensils, conveyor belts and packing and cleaning facilities. They also contributed twenty custom-made meal distribution vehicles to the kitchen to transport the cooked meals to the beneficiary schools. The new Akshaya Patra Foundation kitchen at Rourkela was inaugurated by Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and SAIL dignitaries.
This additional kitchen has brought the total count of Akshaya Patra kitchens to 21 across nine states in India. I am thrilled to see that The Akshaya Patra Foundation is continuing to strive hard toward its goal of providing Food for Education. This latest kitchen is proof that the Foundation is continuing to take strong steps in the direction of achieving its mission of feeding 5 million children by 2020. Keep up the good work Akshaya Patra!
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