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Daily meals keep Akshay healthy and off the streets

Akshay 2
Dear Julian, Heather, and Nanda,

Thank you for gifting a year of meals to Akshav.

12-year old Akshay’s mother is a widow who struggles to feed her children after she took out a loan to pay for her eldest daughter’s marriage.  Most months, all of her earnings go toward paying off the interest on the loan to keep the slumlord moneylenders at bay, leaving nothing for rent or food for her children.  Several times in the past year, the family has been evicted and has had to relocate.  Akshay and his two younger siblings receive educational, medical, and nutritional support services through the Ashraya Initiative for Children (AIC)’s Education Outreach Program.   These meals include breakfast, a packed lunch hand-delivered to the children’s school, and a healthy after-school snack.  Furthermore, due to the food insecurity faced by Akshay’s family, Akshay and his siblings take home a packed parcel of food leftover from the day’s lunch – chapati (flatbread), bhaji (cooked vegetables), fruit and milk – so that they do not go to bed hungry and their mother doesn’t send them to beg on the streets.  Akshay has a medical condition that requires him to take daily medication for his liver, and without the meals he eats at the AIC Education Outreach Centre, he becomes very ill taking his medication on an empty stomach.  The meals are truly a lifeline for Akshay!

 




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