Chief Minister of Gujarat, Vijay Rupani Inaugurated Akshaya Patra Foundation’s kitchen at Jamnagar in a video conferencing event as an integrated approach for the community service in collaboration with Reliance foundation and Jamnagar Municipal corporation aiming to serve 50 thousand children nearby with quality food.
Initially, the community kitchen will run at its 70% capacity enabling 33,375 children under Mid-Day Meal (MDM) and ICDS Anganwadi feeding programme of government.
Chief guest for the occasion was Vijay Rupani – Chief Minister of Gujarat. The event was also attended by Dharmendrasinh Jadeja – State Minister of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, Poonamben Maadam – Member of Parliament, Jamnagar (Devbhumi Dwarka), Raghavjibhai Patel – MLA, Jamnagar Rural, Chiragbhai Kalariya – MLA, Jamjodhpur, Mahendra Nathwani – Group President, Reliance Industries Ltd., and Satish Patel, IAS – Municipal Commissioner, Jamnagar Municipal Corporation.
Speaking on this occasion, Vijay Rupani said, “Today, Akshaya Patra Foundation with the support of Reliance Foundation has launched its state-of-the-art centralised kitchen so that children get nutritious meals. I believe that this kitchen can provide good quality mid-day meals to approximately 50,000 government school-going children of Urban and Rural Jamnagar. I congratulate all the persons engaged in this project.” He also distributed Happiness Kits to children. These kits are designed keeping in mind the health and the education of children during the pandemic, and therefore, contain essential groceries, hygiene products and education materials.
Chanchalapathi Dasa, vice-chairman of Akshaya Patra, said, “We are immensely grateful to the Chief Minister, Vijay Rupani for launching our 55th kitchen today and giving us this opportunity to serve the children. I want to extend my gratitude to the Ministry of Education (MoE), Government of India, for their continued support and encouragement to the Foundation’s feeding initiative over the last 20 years. I also want to thank the Jamnagar Municipal Corporation and Reliance Foundation for partnering with us to serve children. Such partnerships play a crucial role in ensuring the sustainability of our feeding initiatives.”
Jaganmohan Krishna Dasa said, “We are thankful for the support we have received from the Jamnagar Municipal Corporation and Reliance Foundation for this kitchen. It will enable us to reach 50,000 children in this region with nutritious mid-day meals every day. I also want to thank the Government of Gujarat for their support to Akshaya Patra’s endeavours in the state for over a decade.”
The duo of foundations already feed 4.14 lakh beneficiaries in other parts of Gujarat as Ahmedabad, Bhavnagar, Surat, Kalol and Bhuj in Gujarat through its six centralised kitchen. This well equipped kitchen will be build on 2965 sq mt. of land mounting the number as 7th kitchen in Gujarat and 55th across the nation.
