As the eldest child, she
often has to skip class to help her parents harvest wheat. Maya says her
parents believe this is a more efficient use of her time, but she has
another good reason for attending school -- more food.
"At school we get the
most amount of food. At home we don't get this much. At home my mother
tells us to only eat a little bit so there's enough for everyone," she
says.
Following a landmark
decision by the Supreme Court in 2001, all government schools in India
are mandated to provide free meals to students below the age of 13. In a
country where more than 40% of children below the age of five are
underweight, according to UNICEF, India's midday meal scheme is making
great strides.
The Akshaya Patra Foundation
is working with the government to feed 1.4 million underprivileged
children every day. They began in 2000, feeding a few thousand school
children in several schools in the southern city of Bangalore. But in
the space of a decade, they say they've served more than a billion meals
across the country. Akshaya Patra's Vice Chairman, Chanchalapathi Dasa,
says the benefits are manifold. Enrollment in schools has increased by
roughly 20%, attendance has improved, children are healthier and their
cognitive abilities have also increased.
"If a child is hungry in the classroom then he or she will not be able to receive all this education," says Dasa.
But preparing food for so many takes more than an ordinary kitchen.
You could call it a
culinary revolution. In what looks like a factory for food, fresh meals
are being mass-produced for millions of children. Custom-made cauldrons
can prepare rice for 1,000 kids in 15 minutes. A printing press-like
machine can make an impressive 40,000 Indian flatbreads or chapattis in
an hour.
"India is a place of
numbers. If you're doing something to provide meals for 1,000 or even
5,000 children, you are merely scratching the surface," adds Dasa. "From
the beginning we at Akhshay Patra realized that in order to see a
significant impact we have to do it in scale and that we have to use
modern techniques of management and innovation."
They call it a three
tier gravity flow kitchen. Tons of raw ingredients like rice, lentils
and vegetables are taken to the top floor where they're cleaned, peeled,
cut and sent down chutes into waiting cauldrons below. There, steam
generated by furnaces cooks the food. The cooked meals are then thrown
down chutes to another level where the meals are packaged. By 8 a.m.
meals are ready to be delivered in special vehicles designed to keep the
food warm.
But while the food production process is efficient, it is also considered.
"We want to treat these
children with dignity. We don't say 'you are poor children and whatever
we give you, you must eat that,' no. We adapt our cooking methods, our
menus, recipes to meet the local children's requirements," says Dasa.
"You see, in India every
300 miles you come across a different culture, a different language, a
different kind of food habit, so at Akshaya Patra we are sensitive to
local cultural requirements and tastes."
While there are several
school feeding programs that distribute rations of wheat and rice,
cooked meal programs are rare. This is one of the most successful
assistance programs yet -- nourishing food for millions of children and
food for thought in the fight against poverty.
