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Akshaya Patra launches �Happiness Kit� for poor children

By STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI, Sept 18 - With the aim to mitigate childhood hunger during the pandemic, the Akshaya Patra Foundation has announced the launch of the �Happiness Kit� to support children from vulnerable communities and their families.

Happiness Kit comprises food items that provide essential nutrients for daily consumption leading to the health, growth and development of a child. Pulses, spices, peanuts, jaggery, biscuits and other food items in the kit are to supplement and enhance the nutritional intake of children and their families, above and beyond the set allocation of grains by the Central and State governments and the Union HRD Ministry.

The kit also includes a soap, a toothbrush, toothpaste and sanitary pads to promote hygiene in children. To exercise their cognitive abilities, activity-based learning workbooks are also included in respective regional languages.

Having received enthusiastic support from the Happiness Kit pilot project, which targeted 38,666 schoolchildren in Guwahati and another 1,200 children in Bangalore, Akshaya Patra aims to scale up and expand the programme across locations to midday meal beneficiaries on their school premises, with student�s parents picking up their kit.

Speaking about the Happiness Kit, Shridhar Venkat, CEO of the Akshaya Patra Foundation, said, �As Indians, we must focus on creating high quality human capital which will define our demographic dividend. This September, as we observe the National Month of Nutrition, we launched the Happiness Kit initiative to take care of the nutritional and educational needs of children who are missing school due to the pandemic. I am extremely thankful to our patron donors and individual donors for coming forward and supporting this initiative.�

Till now, the number of kits that have been distributed is close to 11,000. They are being distributed in locations such as Guwahati, Bangalore, Vadodara, Silvassa, Mumbai, Lucknow, Hyderabad, etc, as a way of maximizing their reach and will continue to be distributed until the schools reopen, statewise.

The kit contains essential nutrients like glucose, iron, calcium, iodine, protein that help boost the immunity of the child. Each kit has a nutritional value of 717.5 g of protein and 22,175 cal of energy, while on a per meal basis, each child receives 23.9 g of protein and 739 cal of energy.

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