According to an article by the Christian Science Monitor, the Akshaya Patra Foundation, a nonprofit in India, serves 1.5 million lunches to school children each day. Over the course of the year, the organization gives out over 330 million hot lunches.
In just 12 years, the Akshaya Patra Foundation has become one of the world’s largest and effective non-government organizations.
The foundation made a point when it first began to make their operation scalable. They didn’t want to just take food from places to then put it in a couple of schools. They wanted to cast a wide net to provide for many people. They actually cook all of their own food in factories that can provide for an upwards of 200,000 kids. They have their own trucks that deliver the meals to the schools as well. They have basically created the whole operation, from production all the way to distribution – everything is in house. This helps cut down on costs as they don’t need to outsource for any materials along the process. That is the reason per kid a meal only costs .08 cents and the for the year $28. Remarkable numbers.
According to the article, the Akshaya Patra Foundation “constantly innovates – including using data analytics, cooking using clean energies, and constantly improving ingredients to have healthier food – while keeping the cost the same. It hires the best talent available – experts from India’s best schools and companies, and pays them a comfortable wage. And it maintains strong corporate governance with boards, auditors and others joining in.”
Central and state governments are also on board with the foundation and their vision and well as a growing middle class. With all the support and the ability to scale and make meals affordable, everyone will continue to benefit and the foundation should only continue to grow.
