Huffingtonpost: What do chocolate pumps have to do with solving world hunger? Quite a bit, if you ask the Akshaya Patra Foundation.
The Balgdon Pump, initially designed to pump liquid chocolate, helps
complete the herculean task of preparing fresh nutritious meals for over
1.3 million impoverished children daily in government-run schools
across ten Indian states. For many children, this is their only complete
meal of the day, which gives them an incentive to come to school, stay
in school, and focus on learning.
The Akshaya Patra Foundation, a public-private partnership, is the largest NGO-run midday meal
program in the world. It utilizes innovative technology, smart
engineering and good management to reach and continue to grow its
current levels of service delivery and keep costs low. It costs them
just $15 to feed each child for an entire academic school year.
Madhu Pandit Das, a graduate of the premier Indian Institute of
Technology in Bombay, founded Akshaya Patra with a group of dedicated
social entrepreneurs who were also leaders in the Indian IT, engineering
and business communities. This group of individuals recognized the
seemingly insurmountable problem of childhood hunger and its effects on
access to education, and on India's -- and ultimately the world's --
economic and social development. Fortunately, the founders possessed the
engineering skills needed to design equipment and layout for a
mechanized kitchen which can efficiently cook nutritious meals for large
numbers of children at a low-cost.
Their school meal program started modestly, feeding 1,500
underprivileged children in five government schools in Bangalore. A
month after the program began, teachers started to report increased
attendance by students, and letters started pouring in from neighboring
schools asking to be included. This was a defining moment for Pandit as
he realized just what one complete meal a day means to children and
their families. He saw this as an important strategic intervention in
education that unlocks the vicious and perpetual cycle of poverty.
Technical Innovation in a Commercial Kitchen
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| Madhu Pandit Das, Founder of Akshaya Patra |
While the Balgdon chocolate pump is now far removed from the
chocolate industry, its function -- to move very viscous fluid --
remains the same. Akshaya Patra ingeniously uses it to pump the "ganji"
(excess water from cooking rice) out of the rice cauldrons, where it is
then recycled for use in bio-culture or vehicle washing water. This is
not the only piece of innovative technology they have become to be known
for.
The hallmark of Akshaya Patra's program is its centralized kitchen
facilities, which have been designed and engineered to optimize quality
and minimize cost, time and labor. These fully automated kitchens can
prepare 185,000 meals in less than five hours by utilizing gravity flow
mechanisms to minimize human handling of food, mechanized high-speed
cutting of vegetables and conveyor belts for easy transportation. Large
stainless steel cauldrons with easy-tilt mechanisms prepare 1,200 liters
of lentils in two hours and a specially designed roti-making machine
cooks up 40,000 rotis (flat whole wheat bread) in one hour. Steam is
used as a source of cooking, which accelerates the cooking process,
retains nutrients, and is cost-effective and clean. To date, six of the
Akshaya Patra kitchens have received FSMS ISO 22000:2005 certification
-- a first of its kind achievement for an NGO.
Total Efficiency from Kitchen to School
After the food leaves the kitchen, the Akshaya Patra meal delivery
system involves well-coordinated precision logistics using custom
designed vehicles that quickly and safely deliver cooked food to schools
according to a strict schedule, with optimal storage and minimal
spillage. In an effort to minimize fuel consumption and cost, they have
developed route simulation software. A pilot run of this tool reduced
the number of routes in the Bangalore South kitchen by 10 percent, and
experts estimate that an optimization opportunity of up to 15 percent
exists if the tool is implemented across all units. Efficiencies in
logistics operations were improved by making use of GPS technology in
meal delivery vehicles and automating attendance data collection from
the schools using IVRS hand-held devices.
Given the size of Akshaya Patra's operation, a strain exists on the
local natural resources. India, having 18 percent of the world's
population on 2.4 percent of the world's total area, has experienced
environmental degradation such as water shortages, soil exhaustion and
erosion, deforestation, and air and water pollution. In a bid to reverse
this trend, Akshaya Patra has adopted several environmentally friendly
practices. Six of the twenty one kitchen locations use Briquette run
boilers, fueled by groundnut husk or rice bran instead of diesel. Rain
water is harvested and re-routed into a pond, recharging bore-wells and
reducing dependency on corporation water. Smokeless stoves are being
piloted in their Bangalore location. A mini-fan, powered by rechargeable
batteries and controlled by a regulator, blows air to fan the flames.
This has helped to reduce fuel cost by 50 percent.
Despite India's booming economic growth, the country is still home to
hundreds of millions of people suffering from the dual tragedies of
malnutrition and a lack of education. UNICEF estimates that 57 million
Indian children are malnourished, impairing their cognitive and social
development. The 2011 Global Hunger Index, a report published by the
International Food Policy Research Institute, placed India at 67 out of
81 developing countries in hunger. Unless these serious problems are
addressed, large numbers of India's children will remain unhealthy and
uneducated. This poses a serious obstacle to India's ability to
participate effectively in the world economy. It is estimated that child
malnutrition is responsible for 22 percent of the country's burden of
disease, affecting productivity, income and consumption. Reduced
productivity costs India's economy approximately $2.5 billion annually.
With a potential labor and consumer force of one billion people, this
can have serious implications for the global economy.
A wholesome mid-day meal, served in schools, helps
break the cycle of poverty and helps children to become productive
global citizens. India's expanding economy, in this global environment,
presents extraordinary opportunities for large numbers of young people,
but those who remain uneducated, unskilled and unhealthy will have poor
prospects. Akshaya Patra's technology applications benefit humanity by
liberating children from hunger and a lack of education. They are
investing in a better world by protecting our future. This is a cause I
can get behind.
