Art Odyssey is proud to announce its alliance with The Akshaya Patra Foundation. A portion of the proceeds from each piece sold is donated to The Akshaya Patra Foundation. Please visit www.akshayapatrausa.org for more information about how the lives of thousands of school children are being improved every day.

About The Akshaya Patra Foundation:

Who we are?

The Akshaya Patra Foundation runs one of the largest NGO-run school meal programs in the world. Currently feeding over 8,30, 000 underprivileged students every day, the program is a strategic intervention in education aimed at effacing two of the most debilitating problems facing India for over decades now- hunger and poverty. The Foundation aims to scale up the program to serve one million children by 2010. We believe success on that scale will offer a model for replication by other developmental organizations and State Governments across India.  Eventually, the dream is to ensure that no child in India is left out and every child has equitable access to food, education and health.

Operations, Logistics and Safety Measure

The food is cooked in centralized kitchen facilities that have been designed and engineered from scratch by the Akshaya Patra management to optimize quality and minimize cost. The facility consists of a series of mechanized steam-heated cauldrons, custom-built to cook nutrient, staple and native food most appreciated by children on a long-term basis. Mechanization has minimized human handling of food to ensure high standards of hygiene and cleanliness. Steam heating has accelerated the cooking process, enabling the Foundation to prepare meals in large scale in less than five hours. The food is packed into stainless steel containers and loaded into custom-built vehicles. Using a fleet of vehicles, food is transported to the schools within a 50km radius.  Security personnel escort each vehicle to ensure safe delivery of meals to the schools. The vehicles drop off the meals in the schools (about 20 to 25 schools per vehicle) and on their return trip pick up empty containers. The mapping of the schools to the vehicles has also been done efficiently.