PYP Exhibition: Field trip to Akshaya Patra

The students of Grade VI, working on the issue Hunger for the PYP exhibition went for a field trip to Akshaya Patra, Patancheruvu. The Akshaya Patra foundation was founded by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada in the year 2000 with a motto of ‘unlimited food for education’. Its main aim is to provide food to the underprivileged children so that they don’t miss on their education.  To escape hunger many underprivileged children go to work and earn money rather than going to school. So to make sure that no child escapes the opportunity of being educated, the foundation provides food to millions of school children throughout the country. The children of Grade VI visited the kitchen of the foundation and interacted with the officials to know more about the problem. They found out that the kitchen provides food to about 1 lakh school children every day, within a radius of 120 kms. The foundation is active in 18 states of India where they provide food to nearly 1.3 million children every day. They were also shown a small video on how the food is prepared and distributed, the history of the foundation and the current state of hunger in our country. After interacting with the officials and visiting the kitchen the children then headed to an Aanganwadi centre in Nanakramguda where Akshaya Patra provides food to kids between age group of 1-6 years, lactating mothers and pregnant women. There they distributed biscuits, chocolates, frooti and fruits, which they bought themselves to the kids, pregnant women and lactating mothers. They even donated the frooti that was provided by the school to them. And more importantly most of the kids decided to stay hungry the whole day to experience the pain of Hunger themselves, and none of them complained a bit. They were touched and moved by the work of the organisation and started thinking on how they themselves can make a difference to eradicate hunger. The field trip was a valuable exposure to the kids, who saw and experienced how hunger affects people and how efforts can be made to eradicate it. They were pained to see the hungry people fighting to get food in the Aanganwadi centre; however they also saw a ray of hope in the works of the organisation, which gave them an assurance that the problem they are working on is definitely eradicable.