Akshaya Patra Articles

A good childhood lays the foundation to reach one’s full potential. While adequate nutrition is the cornerstone, it alone cannot guarantee holistic development. For this, children need access to quality education, a safe and nurturing environment, healthcare and opportunities to learn, play and develop social and emotional skills. Together, these factors determine children’s well-being and the adults they will become. Holistic development for every child to reach their full potential What Does a Child Need? Children need multiple forms of support to grow healthy and empowered. This needs to be understood through three interconnected dimensions of child development. Physical Development In a child’s body, physical changes occur constantly. From infancy through preadolescence, adolescence and puberty, the pace of growth is not uniform. The factors that influence this pace vary based on genetics, nutrition, environment and time. Nutrition is one of the most important external factors infl...

Every year, for one day, India turns protection into a ritual. A thread is tied. A promise is spoken. A sibling stands taller, momentarily certain that someone, somewhere, will look out for them. It is a beautiful custom and it deserves the warmth it receives. But it is worth asking a harder, less comfortable question once the thread has frayed and the festivities have folded away into memory: what, exactly, has been protected and for how long? For the roughly 30 million children under five in India who, per the country's newest health survey, still carry the physical evidence of chronic undernutrition in their bodies, protection cannot be a single afternoon's gesture. It has to be a Tuesday in February. A Thursday in July. An ordinary, undecorated, unphotographed school-day lunch, arriving on time, every time, for two hundred-plus days a year. That is the protection that actually changes a life trajectory and it is the protection that receives, by comparison, almost none of ...