ISKCON Food Relief Foundation celebrated Children’s Day on Saturday the 14th Nov 2009 at High Street Phoenix, Lower Parel, Mumbai. It was the finale ground event, a culmination of the School=Lunch awareness campaign and was hosted by High Street Phoenix free of cost. Students from 52 Municipal schools who performed exceptionally well during the year received the awards.Mr Abbhasaheb Jadhav, Education Officer of Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai was the Chief Guest. The awards were distributed by Guests of Honour Emraan Hashmi and Soha Ali Khan, lead stars of the Hindi movie ‘Tum Mile’.HH Radhanath Swami graced the occasion. Also present were Dr. Narendra D Desai Managing Trustee IFRF, Beejal Meswani, Samir Somaiya, Archana and Amit Chandra, Kailash Biyani, Noopur and Kushal Desai, Rajeev Srivastava, Sanjiv Maheshwari, Smt. Geeta More Patil, Coordinator Public Private Partnership Cell MCGM, Mr. Anuj Singh (National Marketing Head and West Head, 93.5 Red FM) and Alex Coutinho (Marketing Head, High Street phoenix).During the awareness campaign for more than 10 days hoardings were displayed at prominent sites in the city. These sites were offered by the courtesy of our outdoor partners Bright & Laqshya.The Canter activity with a compere, project promoters and plasma video display made halts at Malls and Corporate complexes doing street shows and collecting donations. The route was from Bandra to Dahisar and Bandra to Mulund.Our Radio Partner 93.5 RED FM took up this project as their annual ‘Bajaao for a cause’ and their RJ Malishka broadcasted promos and information about the project with appeals for donations and interviews with celebrities like Priyanka Chopra, Salman Khan, Amitabh Bacchan, Abhishek Bacchan and many others for ten days. Listners who wished to contribute would send SMS and our volunteers went to them and collected their donations. The gross collections from listners crossed Rs 22 lacs. A Khichdi party was arranged at the RED FM studio in which some donors and school students participated with Vivek Oberoi.Under the auspices of School=Lunch – a project of the Government of India being implemented by the ISKCON Food Relief Foundation (IFRF), nutritious healthy khichadi is being served to the underprivileged children to liberate them from the scourge of hunger and malnutrition. This is being rolled out in select schools in Delhi, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab and UT of Dadra & Nagar Haveli.The program benefits over 6, 60,000 children (every day) in different parts of India and more than 2, 28,000 children in Maharashtra alone. The objective of the program is to feed 15, 00,000 children by 2011. ISKCON Food Relief Foundation thus fulfills its responsibility by sending out meals to the schools and hopes that the children benefit from this and educate themselves to become educated citizens of the Country.With a vision of “Enhancing Educational Experience,” on an average 251 khichadi meals are served every minute in India round the clock. Radha Krishna Das, Managing Program Director of IFRF says, “We firmly believe that only education can empower a child to explore his potential, earn a decent living and build a better future. It is our aim that each child receives education and it is towards this goal that we have been assisting the Government in the implementation of the Mid Day Meal Program since 2004.”Recently ISKCON Food Relief Foundation participated in the first ever Lifebuoy National Child Health Symposium and Awards. Out of the hundreds of entries received ISKCON Food Relief Foundation was awarded as a leading organization in the sphere of child health with an outstanding contribution in the area of Nutrition.The esteemed jury comprised of Dr. D.Nagaraja, Director & Vice Chancellor National Institute of Mental Health And Nuero-Sciences; Dr. B. Sesikeran, Director National Institute of Nutrition; Ms Ranjana Saikia, Associate Director, Social Transformation Division, TERI; Dr. Swati Y. Bhave, (Executive Director, Association of Adolescent Child Care in India (AACCI) and Mr. Sudhanshu Vats, Vice President, Home Care & Personal Wash, Hindustan Unilever Limited.
Comments