Radhika Iyer: Akshaya Patra UK

Report by Francis Whitbread

In Graham’s absence, I chaired our meeting on 14 May at Ivy Hill, where our speaker was Radhika Iyer from Akshaya Patra, which is a free school meal charity that was set up in India but now operates in the UK. They send meals to schools as this encourages children to attend, with the result that their educational as well as their nutritional needs are dealt with.

As an indication of how the charity has expanded, in 2000  it sent about 1,500 meals to schools in India. In 2026 Akshaya Patra served its 5 billionth meal in India, helps approximately 2.35 million children and is officially the world’s largest free school meals charity.

Our speaker, Radhika, comes from a journalist background, but inspired by the charity’s success in India, was encouraged to volunteer.

There are 4.5 million hungry children in the UK and Akshaya Patra began to provide services here in 2018.

The charity was surprised by the level of poverty in parts of Hertfordshire so a kitchen was set up in Watford in 2020 which has since served over 900,000 meals. The priority is to try to feed “right”, so the meals are vegetarian, with rice an important ingredient. Radhika offered our Club a visit to the Watford premises to see how it operates.

Empower Hour is a specific project Akshaya Patra runs in the UK . This pairs a hot meal with an hour of tuition, provided by teachers at the school outside normal school hours.

Radhika answered a number of questions on Empower Hour from our retired teachers, Maureen and Angela.

Although main focus of UK operations is Hertfordshire and Greater London, the charity assists a school in Nottingham, and has also run a project during the summer holidays at Chelmsford Social Club. Radhika will provide some more information to see if we can assist, perhaps with a fundraising quiz.