A Nepali Mother's Day Made Better: The Nepal Youth Foundation Celebrates Its 22nd Year

When Olga Murphy went to Nepal in 1984 she met the children who inspired the founding of her organization,The Nepal Youth Foundation (NYF). As she camped atop a mountain, watching a group of local children struggling to study by lantern on a crude plank table, she realized what she wanted to do with the rest of her life: help Nepali families gain access to better education and resources.

Since that trip, she has returned to Nepal every year except one, and now spends half of each year there. She considers it her second home. And slowly, but with determination and constantly inspired by the Nepalese children who are so eager to learn, she has forged The Nepal Youth Foundation.

Within a few years of her first trip to Nepal, Murphy had gathered about 80 sponsors and formed the official non-profit. At first a simple initiative to better educate Nepalese children, NYF is now a comprehensive and sophisticated foundation offering multiple programs and contributing to the greater society. Major projects include a full scholarship program that takes recipients from kindergarten through medical school, two small children's homes, 14 hospitals for malnourished children, and a flourishing program (The Indentured Daughters Program) to abolish child slavery in Nepal. NYF has also launched two counseling centers -- one for vocational counseling and another for psycho-social counseling.

(Permission to use photo courtesy The Nepal Youth Foundation) 

One of NYF's most successful programs is called Child Mother Pairs. In conjunction with the Nepalese government, they have founded hospitals which act on charity donations to provide a full month of care and training to a mother and her child for only $250. This program brings malnourished and sick children back to health, trains their mothers in their future care, and then trains mothers to train other mothers to do the same. It's a genuine community education endeavor which extends beyond the hospital walls and is making an impact on the health of families throughout the communities by promoting childcare and nutrition education on a grassroots level. Of this pioneering program, Olga Murphy says: "They get everything they need. Medical care, counseling, healthy food and water, large beds so they can stay with their children -- all for $250 a month. We have also just built a center just outside Kathmandu, where we are building a library, hiring dietitians to educate the Nepali mothers, and starting village outreach programs."

Much of what NYF does is raise awareness within the Nepalese community, teaching proper childcare and nutrition. But through their Indentured Daughters Program, they have also saved over 12,000 girls from forced labor. It has been common practice in Nepal for children to be bonded away as labor by their parents for as little as $50 a year. But the Indentured Daughters Program is saving lives by changing minds. "We were able to change the mentality of the people," says Murphy. "We are turning the community against the custom, so that this will be the last generation of girls that will be sold. It is no longer okay to send your daughter away; it is now looked at by the community as shameful." The program -- which has included a massive nationwide awareness effort including street campaigns and lawsuits -- has been very successful at freeing girls from bondage as well as irradiating the custom at its root level.

NYF is a four-star Charity Navigator charity, and is able to send 81 percent of the money they raise to directly benefit needy children in Nepal. Only 19 percent is spent on fundraising, and with a $2 million budget in 2011, this is no small achievement. NYF stands as one of, if not the best charity available to donors wishing to help the children of Nepal.

As I write this, on the eve of Mother's Day 2012, I can't think of a better gift to support the beauty and sanctity of motherhood and make a real difference to a mother and her child. I applaud the work and life of Olga Murphy, and hope one day to have even a sliver of the success she has had in making a difference to the people of Nepal and beyond. She turns 87 on May 30, and when I asked her if she would have done anything differently, she said, "I just wish I started sooner."

This Mother's Day, or any day for that matter, perhaps this is the perfect gift.

Leveraging Technology to Feed India's Hungry Children

What do chocolate pumps have to do with solving world hunger? Quite a bit, if you ask the Akshaya Patra Foundation. The Balgdon Pump, initially designed to pump liquid chocolate, helps complete the herculean task of preparing fresh nutritious meals for over 1.3 million impoverished children daily in government-run schools across ten Indian states. For many children, this is their only complete meal of the day, which gives them an incentive to come to school, stay in school, and focus on learning.

The Akshaya Patra Foundation, a public-private partnership, is the largest NGO-run midday meal program in the world. It utilizes innovative technology, smart engineering and good management to reach and continue to grow its current levels of service delivery and keep costs low. It costs them just $15 to feed each child for an entire academic school year.

Madhu Pandit, a graduate of the premier Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, founded Akshaya Patra with a group of dedicated social entrepreneurs who were also leaders in the Indian IT, engineering and business communities. This group of individuals recognized the seemingly insurmountable problem of childhood hunger and its effects on access to education, and on India's -- and ultimately the world's -- economic and social development. Fortunately, the founders possessed the engineering skills needed to design equipment and layout for a mechanized kitchen which can efficiently cook nutritious meals for large numbers of children at a low-cost.

Their school meal program started modestly, feeding 1,500 underprivileged children in five government schools in Bangalore. A month after the program began, teachers started to report increased attendance by students, and letters started pouring in from neighboring schools asking to be included. This was a defining moment for Pandit as he realized just what one complete meal a day means to children and their families. He saw this as an important strategic intervention in education that unlocks the vicious and perpetual cycle of poverty.

Technical Innovation in a Commercial Kitchen

While the Balgdon chocolate pump is now far removed from the chocolate industry, its function -- to move very viscous fluid -- remains the same. Akshaya Patra ingeniously uses it to pump the "ganji" (excess water from cooking rice) out of the rice cauldrons, where it is then recycled for use in bio-culture or vehicle washing water. This is not the only piece of innovative technology they have become to be known for.

The hallmark of Akshaya Patra's program is its centralized kitchen facilities, which have been designed and engineered to optimize quality and minimize cost, time and labor. These fully automated kitchens can prepare 185,000 meals in less than five hours by utilizing gravity flow mechanisms to minimize human handling of food, mechanized high-speed cutting of vegetables and conveyor belts for easy transportation. Large stainless steel cauldrons with easy-tilt mechanisms prepare 1,200 liters of lentils in two hours and a specially designed roti-making machine cooks up 40,000 rotis (flat whole wheat bread) in one hour. Steam is used as a source of cooking, which accelerates the cooking process, retains nutrients, and is cost-effective and clean. To date, six of the Akshaya Patra kitchens have received FSMS ISO 22000:2005 certification -- a first of its kind achievement for an NGO.

Total Efficiency from Kitchen to School

After the food leaves the kitchen, the Akshaya Patra meal delivery system involves well-coordinated precision logistics using custom designed vehicles that quickly and safely deliver cooked food to schools according to a strict schedule, with optimal storage and minimal spillage. In an effort to minimize fuel consumption and cost, they have developed route simulation software. A pilot run of this tool reduced the number of routes in the Bangalore South kitchen by 10 percent, and experts estimate that an optimization opportunity of up to 15 percent exists if the tool is implemented across all units. Efficiencies in logistics operations were improved by making use of GPS technology in meal delivery vehicles and automating attendance data collection from the schools using IVRS hand-held devices.

Given the size of Akshaya Patra's operation, a strain exists on the local natural resources. India, having 18 percent of the world's population on 2.4 percent of the world's total area, has experienced environmental degradation such as water shortages, soil exhaustion and erosion, deforestation, and air and water pollution. In a bid to reverse this trend, Akshaya Patra has adopted several environmentally friendly practices. Six of the twenty one kitchen locations use Briquette run boilers, fueled by groundnut husk or rice bran instead of diesel. Rain water is harvested and re-routed into a pond, recharging bore-wells and reducing dependency on corporation water. Smokeless stoves are being piloted in their Bangalore location. A mini-fan, powered by rechargeable batteries and controlled by a regulator, blows air to fan the flames. This has helped to reduce fuel cost by 50 percent.

Despite India's booming economic growth, the country is still home to hundreds of millions of people suffering from the dual tragedies of malnutrition and a lack of education. UNICEF estimates that 57 million Indian children are malnourished, impairing their cognitive and social development. The 2011 Global Hunger Index, a report published by the International Food Policy Research Institute, placed India at 67 out of 81 developing countries in hunger. Unless these serious problems are addressed, large numbers of India's children will remain unhealthy and uneducated. This poses a serious obstacle to India's ability to participate effectively in the world economy. It is estimated that child malnutrition is responsible for 22 percent of the country's burden of disease, affecting productivity, income and consumption. Reduced productivity costs India's economy approximately $2.5 billion annually. With a potential labor and consumer force of one billion people, this can have serious implications for the global economy.

A wholesome mid-day meal, served in schools, helps break the cycle of poverty and helps children to become productive global citizens. India's expanding economy, in this global environment, presents extraordinary opportunities for large numbers of young people, but those who remain uneducated, unskilled and unhealthy will have poor prospects. Akshaya Patra's technology applications benefit humanity by liberating children from hunger and a lack of education. They are investing in a better world by protecting our future. This is a cause I can get behind.

For more information please visit www.foodforeducation.org