On the outskirts of Bengaluru, one of the most modern and hygienic kitchens supplies mid-day meals to 94,000 schoolchildren every day. Work begins as early as 1 in the morning for pre-processing and processing of nutritious food at Doddakallasandra kitchen run by the Akshaya Patra Foundation—an NGO of ISKCON group—on Kanakpura Road.
“Cleaning of raw materials, grounding of masalas and cutting of vegetables are a continuous process that is mechanised as well as manual, while cooking of the meal itself takes four hours. A total of 2,000 kg pulses, 5,000 kg vegetables and 7,000 kg rice are used for cooking meals for 94,000,” says Sundeep Talwar, chief marketing officer of The Akshaya Patra Foundation.
If most of the work is done by Akshaya Patra staff, on some days, they have corporate volunteers from firm such as NetApp helping in preparation of the meals. However, the volunteers are allowed to work only in cleaning of grains, pulses, or cutting of vegetables and that too by maintaining proper hygiene.
A supervisor informs, “It is race against time as the first vehicle with large containers of food leaves the kitchen at 8 am, while the milk is sent by 4 in the morning. 21 volunteers from NetApp are always at the kitchen to see how the mid-day meals are prepared and help simultaneously.”
Net App, a data management and cloud storage solutions company based in Bengaluru, has extended its support to Akshaya Patra’s initiative to make quality food for over 3,000 government schools in Karnataka.
Volunteer Atanu says, “Being part of this initiative gives us a sense of satisfaction. As part of the team, each one of us gets to do five-day paid voluntary work for the foundation every year.”
NetApp has sponsored 188 big and 352 medium insulated food vessels that would help supply additional 20,000 meals a day.
“Value comes from voluntary work and not just giving funds for a social cause,” says Deepak Visveswaraiah, MD of NetApp India, who heads the second largest R & D centre of the company outside the US.
“We do not enforce any activity on employees and they make their own choice.”
It was only in 2014 that their partnership with Akshay Patra began and the company put in a comprehensive programme to help in the mid-day meal scheme leading to retention of children in schools. In addition to this, the funding has gone towards purchasing industrial roti-making machine, and a food delivery vehicle. NetApp sponsors about 3,000 mid-day meals a day. This amounted to over 7.05 lakh meals last year alone. Visveswaraiah says, “The company has appointed a coordinator who organises the voluntary time out (VTO) for employees. However, employees select what they want to do and in which sector—education, healthcare, hygiene or sanitation.”
At present, the foundation is feeding 1.5 million children from 11,000 schools in 10 states and hopes to feed five million children by 2020. Talwar says, “We have been expanding on all fronts—building new centralised kitchens to widening our reach to the under-nourished children. After achieving the feat of having served the two billionth meal, we are making every possible effort to achieve the goal of serving additional 13 lakh beneficiaries every day in Uttar Pradesh. We are all set to launch 11 new kitchens in this state. We aim to eradicate classroom hunger by providing a nutritious meal in school which can placate the parents, and inspire the children to continue their education and give their dreams a new hope.”