A leading non-profit organization committed to eradicating classroom hunger, The Akshaya Patra Foundation announced expanding its partnership with BW LPG India, the country’s largest owner and operator of Very Large Gas Carriers (VLGCs). This strategic partnership, with a renewed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the fiscal year 2024-25, looks to benefit midday meal programs greatly for children in government and government-aided schools under the PM POSHAN initiative. Since its inception, BW LPG India has played an integral role in fueling Akshaya Patra’s centralized kitchens with LPG for the preparation of millions of nutritious meals across multiple states in India.
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In a bid to expand the scale of its midday meal scheme in terms of reach and impact, The Akshaya Patra Foundation has partnered with BW LPG India since 2023. As part of the renewed MOU, it would support twelve Akshaya Patra kitchens against nine at present, thus enabling meals for nearly 42.7 million children. It improved its operational efficiency through its dedicated infrastructure and huge LPG stock at BW LPG India. This, in turn, has also helped with sustainable practices in the kitchen. This collaborative work targets improving nutrition for schoolchildren, which would make an immediate positive impact on educational engagement and well-being overall.
As part of the expanded partnership, BW LPG India recently sponsored the construction of dining sheds in two schools in Bikaner, Rajasthan. This will be a dedicated space for children to enjoy their meals, so no more eating from a plate at the given place for them again. Besides, the alliance involves new projects in Odisha wherein Akshaya Patra will implement greener cooking technologies powered by LPG to improve meal quality with an overall reduction in the environmental footprint of its operations. The Odisha initiative will include a pilot project that would shift from the use of briquettes to LPG-fired boilers for kitchens feeding close to 580 schools and is likely to make the processes seamless. Estimated cost of the dual-fired boiler system and new cooking infrastructure: around Rs 2 crore. Operation costs are estimated for the next three years.
Other than driving the wheels of kitchens, BW LPG India has been actively involved in relief activities for disasters. When the recent Assam floods hit the region, the company contributed INR 20,00,000 that covered relief kits that were supplied by Akshaya Patra to 1,667 families, allowing these families to survive more than two weeks.
With the just-signed MOU that goes all the way until March 2026, the Akshaya Patra Foundation and BW LPG India have committed themselves to taking their joint mission of feeding nutritious meals to schoolchildren across the country forward. This union of BW LPG India’s resources and this already set-up kitchen network of Akshaya Patra represents an expression of social responsibility changing the lives of millions of children every day. This collaboration promises cleaner, energy-efficient cooking solutions that fuel midday meals while also advocating a healthier and sustainability-promoting approach to child nutrition.
Source: NewsVoir