Akshaya Patra to reach out to 2.5 lakh children in Vadodara

VADODARA: More children attending municipal schools in the city can now look forward to tasting delicious and hygienic food dished out from mechanised kitchens. This, as the Akshaya Patra Foundation an initiative of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) is now targeting to feed 2.5 lakh children every day in the city.

Since it began last year in Vadodara, the foundation promoted by sages and devotees of ISKCON, is feeding 80,000 children every day in the city in the mid-day meal scheme of municipal corporation schools. The mechanised centralised kitchen (that has capacity to feed 2.5 lakh children) that has come up at a land provided by the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) at Sevashram Society in Harinagar area of the city is expected to be officially inaugurated by Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi soon.

“This kitchen has a chapati making machine that can cook 40,000 rotis’ per hour, a silo system which allows rice getting automatically cooked without any human intervention and that too for 1,200 children within 15 minutes and a dal’ making machine that can cook dal’ for 6,000 children within two hours,” says Vishwambhar Dasa, volunteer with the foundation, adding that this kitchen will also add another taste to the present mid-day meal.
“Apart from lapsi’ which is presently part of the meal provided to children, we are now equipped with a sweet making machine that can prepare 40 kg of sukhdi’ in an hour.”

While the foundation had started its scheme under arrangement with VMC and support from public sector units like Gujarat State Fertilizers and Chemicals (GSFC) Ltd, Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals Ltd (GACL) and Gujarat Industries Power Corporation Ltd (GIPCL) who as anchor partners of the foundation have sponsored 50,000 children for five years, it presently covers 165 schools. “We will now reach out to schools located in interior areas of the district for which we are preparing a decentralised kitchen model. This model will help us cover 2.5 lakh children in Vadodara step by step,” adds Dasa.