In conversation with The Breakfast Revolution, The Akshaya Patra Foundation, and Share Our Strength
The 2023 United Nations Report on Global Food Security and Nutrition highlights a concerning reality: in nations like India, a staggering 72% of the population struggles to afford a nutritious diet. In the face of the prevailing crisis of undernutrition in children, organisations like The Breakfast Revolution, The Akshaya Patra Foundation and Share Our Strength play an important role in bringing together community involvement to ensure vital nutrition reaches our future generation—our children, who represent the foundation of our society and economy.
Founded in 2014, The Breakfast Revolution has always believed that access to nourishing meals is a basic human right. Since its inception, The Breakfast Revolution has been working with about 325+ partner organizations which include corporations, schools, NGOs, hospitals etc. to provide breakfasts to underprivileged children and women. While the Akshaya Patra Foundation has been making continued efforts to provide wholesome mid-day meals to school children in India for over 22 years. Since last year, the US-based charity organisation, Share Our Strength, has been running pilot programs with The Breakfast Revolution to provide healthy breakfasts every morning to nearly 2,000 vulnerable children.
To build awareness around child nutrition initiatives and create more avenues for participation, Share Our Strength is organising an exclusive dinner event at the Bombay Club in aid of The Akshaya Patra Foundation and The Breakfast Revolution. The event aims to raise INR 1 crore to provide daily breakfasts and mid-day meals for over 10,000 underprivileged school children in the upcoming academic year. Share Our Strength has also committed to match all donations from the event, thereby doubling the impact.
In our conversation with the three organisations, we learnt more about their collaborative efforts aimed at building more avenues to nourish children in schools.
Q: How has The Breakfast Revolution addressed child undernutrition since it started, and could you share more about the impact of its work and future initiatives?
Pankaj Jethwani, Co-founder, The Breakfast Revolution: “We have made steady progress in serving healthy breakfasts to thousands of underprivileged school children, but there is more work to be done. Having served about 400,000 undernourished children and women with about 30.2 million breakfasts, we envision to impact of 1 million lives by 2030. This fundraiser is our humble effort towards helping more children, not only to address undernutrition but also act as an incentive to increase school participation rates.”
Q: In what ways do you believe these partnerships strengthen your collective efforts to ensure that every child has access to nutritious food?
Shridhar Venkat, CEO, The Akshaya Patra Foundation: “We are honoured to collaborate with fellow organizations, such as The Breakfast Revolution and Share Our Strength, that share our belief that the path out of poverty starts with proper nutrition. We believe every child deserves a chance to learn on a full stomach. Together, we can ensure thousands more children receive the food they need to thrive.”
Q. Last year Share Our Strength served over 500 million meals to kids in need across America. How do you see the organization expanding their efforts in India?
Debbie Shore, Share Our Strength: “Share Our Strength has continuously focused on nutrition, education, and overall well-being for underprivileged youth. We believe proper food and nourishment unlock a child’s full potential. In India, our work includes building the capacity of Akshay Patra and The Breakfast Revolution to scale their operations and serve nutritious meals to even more children in need. We are currently running pilot programs with The Breakfast Revolution to provide healthy breakfasts every morning to nearly 2,000 vulnerable children. In February of 2023, we organized our first Feed the Future Now event in Nagpur (inspired by our Taste of Nation events in the US), energizing the local community and philanthropic leaders raising funds to build a new Akshaya Patra Kitchen in Nagpur that will serve an additional 15,000 meals daily.”
Q: Through this event, the support extended by Share Our Strength to The Breakfast Revolution and Akshaya Patra is quite crucial. What strategies does Share Our Strength plan to implement for these organizations?
Debbie Shore, Share Our Strength: “At Share Our Strength, we understand very well how hunger impedes human potential. We believe in the work of The Breakfast Revolution and Akshaya Patra and we will match funds raised at this event. Our goal is to build the capacities of both organisations and add an additional 1 million children to receive school meals over the next 5 years.”
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