The Akshaya Patra Foundation, the world's largest NGO-run midday meal program, has launched Gifts For Moms, Smiles For Children, a Mother's Day Campaign that pays tribute to Mothers worldwide.

The unfaltering love that a Mother invests into raising her children enhances a person's life in a myriad of ways. The closest parallel to a Mother's love is a under a tree's sanguine shade, everyone and everything blossoms into fruition.  Mothers are ubiquitous during a child's many illnesses, then teenage heartbreaks, ultimately never taking enough credit either for a child's small victories or big triumphs.

"That veritable fount of love called Mother does not discriminate.  Putting food on the table is integral to a Mother's spirit and she is opaque by choice, to whether the mouth that she seeks to feed belongs to her own offspring or someone else's," said Madhu Sridhar, president and CEO of Akshaya Patra. "Akshaya Patra's mission of eradicating hunger and promoting education is based on the vision shared by all Mothers worldwide. Gifts For Moms, Smiles For Children wonderfully blends twin tasks of honoring that often-unsung heroine called Mother and pledging food for a child for an entire year."

$28 is a wonderful gift on behalf of a mother that a donor wishes to honor. A child somewhere will smile!

It costs Akshaya Patra $28 to feed a child daily for the entire school year.  Donors to the campaign contribute $28 to Akshaya Patra for each Mother they wish to honor. In areas where the Indian government provides a subsidy, $28 can actually feed two children. Once someone has donated, they can either choose for Akshaya Patra to send an email about their gift to the Mother they are honoring, or they can print out a Mother's Day letter from Akshaya Patra to place in a card.

A public-private partnership, Akshaya Patra's vision is that no child shall be deprived of education because of hunger by combining good management, innovative technology, local sourcing and smart engineering to deliver school lunches economically.  For many of the children this is their only complete meal for the day. This gives them an incentive to come to school, stay in school and provides them with the necessary nutrients they need to develop their cognitive abilities to focus on learning.

In a short time, the foundation has grown to become the largest, and certainly most innovative, school lunch program in the world. Akshaya Patra is a great example of what a non-profit organization can achieve -- a cost effective, scalable solution with high quality service delivery. After reaching its goal of feeding one million children each school day, Akshaya Patra's next milestone is to serve 5 million children daily by 2020.

For more information or to donate to Gifts for Moms, Smiles for Children, please visit http://www.foodforeducation.org.

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