IndiaPost.com - Deshpande to tell 'Akshaya Patra' success story

FREMONT: The Bay Area chapter of the Akshaya Patra Foundation is kicking off the chapter by hosting a talk by Gururaj "Desh" Deshpande, chairman of Sycamore Networks, Inc., A123 Systems and Tejas Networks, on "Akshaya Patra - A Success Story." Deshpande is the board chair for the Akshaya Patra Foundation USA.

He will share with the Bay area people about how the Akshaya Patra Foundation, the largest NGO run school meal program in the world, is feeding over 850,000 underserved children daily mid-day meals in government run schools in India for a cost of $28 a year per child with its public private model.

Akshaya Patra is a non-profit organization with the vision that no child in India shall be deprived of education because of hunger. Akshaya Patra is a public-private partnership that combines good management, innovative technology and smart engineering to deliver school lunch at a fraction of the cost of similar programs in other parts of the world.

It costs only $28 to feed a child daily for the entire school year. The organization has grown exponentially in the last seven years from feeding 1,500 to currently distributing freshly cooked healthy meals to over 850,000 underserved children in over 4,200 government schools every day, in five states in India, making it the largest NGO run school feeding program in the world.

Akshaya Patra strives to feed one million children by 2010. Harvard Business School recently released a case study on Akshaya Patra that is being used for the MBA curriculum for precise time management. Akshaya Patra is also the first and only Asian non-governmental organization chosen by the Congressional Hunger Center (CHC) for its Mickey Leland International Hunger Fellows Program.

CHC is a unique not-for-profit anti-hunger leadership training organization located in Washington D.C. In addition, Akshaya Patra was one of the only 30 organizations to be highlighted at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2007.

Through kitchens especially designed by engineers to leverage technology and sourcing its food stocks from local markets, Akshaya Patra is able to reduce costs associated with transportation and food spoilage while supporting the local economy.

In a short time, the foundation has grown to become the largest, and certainly most innovative, school lunch program in the world. Akshaya Patra is a great example of what a non-profit organization can achieve-- a cost effective, scalable solution with very high quality service delivery.

Dr. Deshpande, chair of Akshaya Patra's board and the featured speaker at the event, serves as a member of the MIT Corporation, and his generous donations have made possible MIT's Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation.

Other non-profit initiatives he supports include the Indian institute of Technology (IIT), TiE- The Indus Entrepreneurs, the Public Health Foundation of India and the Social Entrepreneurship Sandbox in India.