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Akshaya Patra Chicago Gala Raised Funds to Bring Nutrition & Education to 5 Million Children by 2020

Rolling Meadows, IL: On Saturday May 7, more than 400 people gathered for the Akshaya Patra USA Chicago Gala at the Meadows Club in Rolling Meadows Il to support the world's largest NGO-run school meal program providing nutritious meals to 1.5 million children across India every day, totaling more than 2 billions meals to date.

The star-studded event was emceed renowned Indian American actor Omi Vaidya who is best known for his performances in Bollywood films 3 Idiots and Chatur Ramalingam or "The Silencer" and the special guest and keynote speaker was Gopi Kallayil, Chief Evangelist for Brand Marketing at Google.

The evening commenced with introductory remarks from Emily Rosen CEO and Manisha Gandhi, Development Director of Akshaya Patra. They shared the extra-ordinary accomplishments of feeding more than 1.5, million children a day through the mid-day meal programs across India and future vision for the Akshaya Patra to feed more than 5 million each day through their food kitchens. Manisha Shah shared her vision of building In building more kitchens in India since each kitchen produces somewhere from 100,000-250,000 meals per day. "We hope to build kitchens in places like Varanasi, Delhi and other parts of Uttar Pradesh. Our process as it gets better and better we are able to feed more children and our goal is to reach 5 million by year 2020," said Gandhi.

The presentation was followed by an opening dance performance by students from the Nithyanajali dance academy that performed a classical Bharatnatyam dance paying homage for Hindu deity lord Rama.

American born actor, Omi Vaidya entertained the audience throughout the evening with his great comedic insight and talked in detail about his dedication to the Akshaya Patra in an indepth interview with Desi Talk Chicago.

" I remember during my summer visits with my family to Maharashtra and Goa, and we used to take buses and we never took taxis, we saw how real people lived and how amazing things were for us in the US, most Indian children here take things for granted, if we were born there we would be living in a village and struggling for basic needs. I could not help but use my notoriety to get exposure especially since the cost of helping a child a day is less than 12 cents a meal.

Vaidya, who has conscientiously pursued films which are meaningful to the Indian diaspora and back home talked briefly about this upcoming project the story of Dalip Singh Saund, one the first South Asian heroes in the US. "There is this trend in Hollywood of Indian American films where they take Indian characters and themes and surround them with American people and create a happy film like Slum dog Millionaire, Million Dollar Arm, and they all make ridiculous amounts of money, but they don't really help the Indian Americans here. They don't put us in a great light we are just sort of exotic locations and comedic characters. As a child I struggled to find a well-known hero who was Indian, who had gone threw difficulties of racism, one such hero was Dalip Singh Saund the first Asian Congressman in 1955. He had to deal with not being a citizen, not owning land, even his wife was forced to give up her citizenship, he later became a judge and a congressman and basically paved the road for citizenship for all of us," said Vaidya.

The most remarkable address of the evening was from Gopi Kallayil Chief Evangelist of Brand Marketing at Google, who drew starkly accurate commonalities between the Google and the way in which Akshaya Patra works, he talked about 3 basic Google principals of innovation "rapid proto-typing" creating a fast solution, "think 10x" which means trying to make things ten times better, faster whatever your are trying to achieve and "default to open" which highlights that the components of solution cannot come from only one source but from the environment itself and those who are experiencing the problem .

Citing the example of Google's cloud "Loom" project which is trying to bring internet connectivity to across the world by sending cloud with a signal which can be transmitted with a 100 mile radius, and comparing it the Achaia Patra chapatti making machines which originally only produced a few thousand per hour to creating a machine which makes 60,000 chapattis per hour Kallayil drew some amazing insights into how the Akshaya Patra model has worked successfully to reduce hunger in India.

Kallayil, who seems to have no problem linking corporate organizational growth with spirituality, talked freely about the how to the approach "BIG" problems and the importance of creating a value for society at large at Google and practices of meditation and yoga, which has helped him, feed the "inner-self" not just the Internet.

In his book, titled "From the Internet to the Inner-self" Kallayil talks about this very phenomenon. " Each one of us possesses the most powerful tool in the world, the "human brain" which can be used infinitely", said Kallayil in an interview.

The keynote address was followed by a heart touching video presentation featuring the young children whom Akshaya Patra has helped by the mid day meal program and highlighted the dual benefits nutrition and education for many poor children. Children talked about how parents initially did not want them to attend school and preferred they work instead to help meet basic needs have started encouraging their children to attend the school, so as to save them the direct cost of feeding their children. "Now my father wants my other brothers and sisters to attend school as well, because it saves them the money of feeding us." Others testified that the mid-day lunches are better prepared and healthier than the food they receive at their own homes, which many times causes them to get sick.

" We have found our model," said Manisha Shah as she talked about the dual benefits of nutrition and education provided through the Mid-Day Meals program. We just need the support of you all to make it bigger and one day every child in India may have both food and education."

Special guest the Mayor of Burr Ridge, Mickey Straub also spoke passionately about the organization, and congratulated the organization on its outstanding work.

A second dance performance was performed by Nathyajali; and a brief Mother's Day dedication to the mother's of Akshaya Patra was followed by live auction which included a private tour of the Google head quarters with Gopi Kallayil as an item for bidding.

The evening concluded with the sonorous and meaning ghazals by Jaswinder Singh Bunty former disciple of the famous Indian singer Jagit Singh. " We are so happy we were able to support an event like this, we are impressed with the innovation and fiscal responsibility the Akshaya Patra has shown, as a mother myself I can't imagine not having enough food to give me family. This is a great organization doing amazing work," said one of the first time attendees.

The organizing committee extended their deepest gratitude to dignitaries and host committee supporters including Mayor of Burr Ridge, Mickey Straub, Indian Consulate General of Chicago Dr. Ausaf and Farah Sayeed, Mafat Patel of Patel Brothers, Executive Vice President of DesiTalk Chicago, Bhailal Patel, Dr. Romi Chopra, Dr. Bharat Barai, Harish and Saroj Patel and Iftekhar Shareef Trustee of FIA.

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