The Akshaya Patra Foundation is a non-profit trust of

International Society for Krishna Consciousness The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), known colloquially as the Hare Krishna movement or Hare Krishnas, is a Gaudiya Vaishnava Hindu religious organization. ISKCON was founded in 1966 in New York City by A. C. Bhaktiv ...

(ISKCON), located in

Bangalore Bangalore (), List of renamed places in India, officially Bengaluru (), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan area, metropolitan population of a ...

Karnataka Karnataka (; ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a state in the southwestern region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act. Originally known as Mysore State , it was renamed ''Karnat ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. The organisation operates the

Midday Meal Scheme The Midday Meal Scheme is a school meal programme in India designed to better the nutritional standing of school-age children nationwide. The programme supplies free lunches on working days for children in government primary and upper primary sc ...

(a school lunch programme) in India.

Mid Day Meal program

Akshaya Patra is the largest partner of the Union Government of India to implement the Mid Day Meal scheme in the government run schools of India. The scheme is based on a public-private partnership.

Organisation

APF is run by

(ISKCON), Bangalore. The organisation was established in 2000.

Irregularities in the foundation's workings

In 2020, four of the independent trustees of APF resigned alleging misuse of funds of the foundation and governance issues in the APF. #Former Infosys leader T.V. Mohandas Pai; #advisor to Manipal education and medical group Abhay Jain; #former Infosys CFO V Balakrishnan and #co-founder of ChrysCapital Raj P. Kondur These trustees had alleged that the chairman of APF, Madhu Pandit Dasa, and his supporters on the board were targeting the audit committee that was looking into the allegations of the misuse of funds. According to the trustees, the chairman and his supporters were doing this to resist transparency. In the years around 2020, the cost of a meal that APF provided had shot up by at least 5₹ in comparison to the other NGOs. This increase in cost was being investigated.

Other initiatives

The Akshaya Patra kitchens produce about 350 kilograms of organic waste each day. To reduce the amount of waste going to landfill, the foundation has set up

biogas plants Anaerobic digestion is a sequence of processes by which microorganisms break down biodegradable material in the absence of oxygen. The process is used for industrial or domestic purposes to manage waste or to produce fuels. Much of the ferment ...

in some of its kitchens. This initiative started with the centralized kitchens at

Bellary Bellary, officially Ballari, in the eponymous Bellary district, is a city in the state of Karnataka, India. History Bellary was a part of Rayalaseema (Ceded Districts) which was part of Madras Presidency till 1 November 1956. The Ballari ...

and Vasanthapura (Bengaluru) on Earth Day (April 22) 2016 and now extends to six kitchens across the country. The

biogas Biogas is a mixture of gases, primarily consisting of methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide, produced from raw materials such as agricultural waste, manure, municipal waste, plant material, sewage, green waste and food waste. It is a ...

plants, with a capacity to process 1 tonne per day (TPD) of organic waste, generate 120 to 150 m³ of biogas the equivalent of 30 kilograms of LPG. This gas is consumed in the kitchen's cooking operations and saves APF INR 38,500 per month. This translates to savings of about 10% in total energy consumption required for cooking. APF has installed of

solar photovoltaic A photovoltaic system, also PV system or solar power system, is an electric power system designed to supply usable solar power by means of photovoltaics. It consists of an arrangement of several components, including solar panels to absorb and c ...

(PV) systems at some of its kitchens. Based on the weather these systems produce 80-100 units of electricity per day and this power's the facility's daytime energy requirement e.g. the Bengaluru plant generates 10 kW of power and this is entirely consumed by the facility, whereas the Surat plant generates 12 kW of power with some of the surplus power being fed back to the grid for a credit. After the COVID-19 lockdown was announced, Akshaypatra began a food program to feed the migrant workers. They provided cooked food as well as dry grocery kits

Awards

*In 2019, APF received the BBC’s Global Food Champion Award.

References

External links

The Akshaya Patra Foundation
- Official Website
Akshaya Patra: A Leader in Battling Classroom Hunger
- A case-study on Akshayapatra {{Authority control Organizations established in 2000 Educational organisations based in India Children's charities based in India Organisations based in Bangalore Recipients of the Rajyotsava Award 2003 Winners of the Nikkei Asia Prize Recipients of the Gandhi Peace Prize 2000 establishments in Karnataka