Annamrita: Serving food that nourishes the soul

Gurugram: Annamrita Foundation having its Megakitchen in, Pace city-II, Sector-37, aims at providing healthy and hygienic mid-day meals to children all over the Gurugram District to more than 76,000 children daily. With the motto of "Food for Life", the organisation serves nutritious and hygienic food to over 2.5 lakh children from more than 2 thousand schools every day in the different districts of Haryana, namely, Gurugram, Palwal, Faridabad and Kurukshetra.

The kitchens of the Foundation are counted among the Mega kitchens in the country and complies with every aspect of Quality and Food Safety Management systems which henceforth ensures that the food provided is of utmost quality and hygiene.

Made in the purest of oils and spices, it is an effort to provide a basic balanced diet to the students which are bound to nourish the body as well as keeping the heart happy and healthy. Anything unfavourable to digestion or swaying away from the standard nutritional value of food is completely avoided. All the eatables firstly go through end number of cleaning and sorting processes before being finally cooked and served. Annamrita ensures that there is nothing to cause any health issue at their front.

The foundation pro-actively helped various district administration in providing meals support to this year's flood victims. Majorly in Gurugram district, the foundation has shaken hands with a lot of corporates and NGO partners for raising the awareness of mid-day meals and education. Deputy Commissioner of Gurugram, Mr Amit Khatri, the young dynamic IAS officer says, "I am pleased with the midday meal programme in my district and appreciate ISKCON's Annamrita. These are calm and composed of people."

The students are taught to develop good food habits, like washing their hands before and after every meal, maintaining a clean eating place and ensuring proper hygiene of the utensils. This, in turn, teaches them to be clean and hygienic at all times personally as well as communally. Annamrita itself ensures a healthy and clean environment for all its staff members and make sure they go through routine checkups to avoid any contamination due to bodily diseases. There are thousands of children involved in child labour just to harbour a living for the sake of food. They ditch studies so they can take up jobs and fill their bellies. With the beginning of these mid-day meal facilities, food and knowledge are made available to these children together with absolutely nothing being asked in return.

Different kinds of cultural, drawing competitions and other engagement activities are organized side by side with the food services and the foundation tries its best to inculcate as many children as possible to make them aware of the importance of healthy living with good food. Smt. Suman Sharma, the Principal of Government Public School, Sector 4/7, Gurugram said, "This initiative of the mid-day meals has benefited a lot of children, who now can get a proper diet. We are highly obliged to The Annamrita Foundation for it was because of their support that we were able to make this a success!"

The foundation focuses on inhabiting a 'good food, good mind' relationship among the children. Says Dhananjaya Krishna Das, Vice Chairman Annamrita - North India, "Foundation's supreme efforts through its blessed food is in the direction to not only make these little bellies full but also their spirits nourished!"