It’s school time again!
The bells will go again.
Classrooms will be filled with children.
Teachers will be teaching and clearing doubts.
Some kids will be excited to eat their mid day meals and some may be nervous.
Anxiety and depression are very common in children with the thought of going to school.
According to The State of the World’s Children 2021, 1 in 7 15 to 24-year-olds in India, has little interest in doing things.
But nothing should stop a child from coming to school to get educated.
Even during the pandemic, different steps were taken to ensure that children’s education is not affected.
For the safety of children, the Government of India ensured that they get access to education even when they are at home. Hence, online education became a norm for close to two years.
Caught in Digital Divide, India’s Poor Children Are Suffering
The gravest catastrophe of our times has ushered in a path-breaking digital learning experiment, even while COVID-19 has upended lives for a large section of our under-served population.
For children and parents from low socio-economic sections of society, the lockdown period was a burden with no food to eat and no access to children’s education due to a lack of the right technology.
With schools staying shut, millions of children were robbed of their only nutritious meal of the day – the mid day meal (MDM) scheme in government schools, which provides free lunches to 120,000,000 children in the country. This is why there was a necessity to feed the children and bring them back to school.
Children have to fight three negativities in their life: Uncertainty. Grief. Loneliness.
Did you know?
Children heading back to school, face unusual challenges like separation anxiety and depression. Due to COVID-19, 90% of all students were kept out of school, which in turn reversed the years of progression in education.
To eradicate hunger that is associated with poverty, the Government, State Governments, District Authorities and many NGOs in India joined hands with each other to work in tandem to bring out the best for generations to come.
Intervention of The Akshaya Patra Foundation
To solve India’s complex malnourishment challenge and achieve the second UN Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger was extremely necessary. It would involve concerted pro-active measures, such as instilling nutritional awareness at all levels and constant monitoring of nutritional status of severe malnutrition cases amongst children.
Mid day meals (MDM) as a source of nourishment
Even after the pandemic is long gone, for over 200 million Indian children, the impact of diminished nutrition could continue to stay all through their lifetime. To encourage them to pursue their education and dreams, The Akshaya Patra Foundation continued to implement the Mid-Day Meal Programme.
Akshaya Patra is an NGO in India that has been renowned for running the largest school meal programme for 21 years in 61 locations across 14 states and 2 union territories of India. To ensure there is no wastage of food, this Foundation provides locally palatable meals to school children. Healthy meals bring up healthy children to grow into healthy adults. Donate online to Akshaya Patra which carefully prepares meals from its centralised and decentralised kitchens. Only one safe and hygienic meal a day can fill a child’s stomach for one school year. These meals give children the energy to take part in co-curricular activities and concentrate better in class.
Donate your might today for the future of the next generation.
