CHICAGO: Over $168,000 was raised at Akshaya Patra’s 2016 Chicago Gala held on Saturday, May 7th at the Meadows Club in Rolling Meadows, a North West suburb of Chicago, with close to 400 community and business leaders attending the event
Among prominent personalities attending the event were Mayor of the Village of Burr Ridge Mickey Straub, Vice President of Technology at Allstate Pranava Doctor, Indian CG Dr Ausaf Sayeed, Mafat Patel, Madan Kulkarni, Iftekhar Shareef, Ketu Amin, Neal Patel, Raj Patel, Dipak Kapadia, Beena Patel, Dr. Bharat Barai, Dr. Umang Patel, Mohanbir Sawhney,
Gopi Kallayil, Chief Evangelist for Brand Marketing at Google, was the event’s keynote speaker. Comedian and actor Omi Vaidya from the movie “3 Idiots” emceed the event.
Emily Rosenbaum, CEO of Akshaya Patra USA spoke about Akshaya Patra’s work and their process of reaching 1.5 million children daily. Her presentation included the invention of kitchens that produce over 150,000 meals a day. The scaling and technology used by Akshaya Patra reduces the meal cost to merely $15 per year per one child!
Manisha C Gandhi, Director of Development for Akshaya Patra USA, honored all the mothers for Mother’s Day. Many attendees were able to see photos of them with their children in a collage while the iconic song “Tu Kitni Achhi Hai” was being sung by Manisha.
Established in 2000, Akshaya Patra began by serving 1,500 in 5 schools in Bangalore. Today Akshaya Patra is the largest NGO-run school meal program in the world and serves over 1.5 million children daily in over 11,501 schools through 24 kitchens in ten states in India. This March, Akshaya Patra will celebrate its 15th Anniversary and the serving of its 2 billionth meal to children in India.
Akshaya Patra has received international recognition for its life-changing mission. In 2016, Akshaya Patra’s Founder Madhu Pandit Dasa received the Padma Shri Award. Shridhar Venkat, CEO of Akshaya Patra India, was recognized as being among the 50 Most Impactful Social Innovators in the world.
It was recently awarded the Nikkei Asia Prize, an award established to recognize an organization’s outstanding achievements that contribute to the region’s sustainable development.
Suresh Bodiwala
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