This state which has seen phenomenal economic growth in the last decade has also seen a great deal of improvement in the arena of classroom hunger, partly due to the work of The Akshaya Patra Foundation.
Gujarat was the second state in India to begin implementing the Central Mid-Day Meal Scheme in 1984. From June 2006 the State Government invited NGOs to take part in the process, and pilot projects were started in three talukas of Valsad district, and the Eastern part of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation. Later the scheme was handed over to Akshaya Patra to run the mid-day meal programme in the Gandhinagar Taluka and the Western part of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation.
The organisation’s first kitchen in Gujarat started in June 2007 at Gandhinagar. Today this kitchen feeds 121,508 children across 666 government schools on every school day. Soon after this the Vadodara kitchen was opened in 2009 and the Surat kitchen in 2012, feeding 113,593 children and 165,057 children respectively. Together the three centralised kitchens feed 400,158 children across 1,653 government schools every day. Out of these three kitchens the Gandhinagar and Vadodara kitchens are ISO 22000:2005 certified while the Surat kitchen is in the process of getting certification.
These kitchens have been growing by leaps and bounds since inception. The Vadodara and Surat kitchens have adopted the Six Sigma Project and Quality Circle Principles to optimize their resources, and the Surat kitchen has adopted ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) in its kitchen, while the Gandhinagar kitchen reaches out to 137 schools as part of its Anganwadi programme.
Akshaya Patra’s presence in the state of Gujarat has been growing at a sustainable and steady rate since inception. With a mission of feeding 5 million children across India by 2020, Akshaya Patra is only looking towards the future, planning for different avenues of growth and expansion to make this dream come true. Today the Foundation reaches out to 1.39 million children across 10,631 government schools every day.
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