With a strong will to servce, a blossoming idea and the courage to initiate it, the Annapoorna breakfast program was born in a small village in rural India. Starting with one school with 60 children, several loving volunteers created a program to feed the children breakfast before school, as many of the children came from homes in which breakfast and food could not always be provided. The hope was to encourage the children to attend school where they would learn and grow. The positive result of the seemingly simple project was undeniable! Drop-out rates reduced, there was great increase in attention and attendance and many other benefits were quickly observed by providing children with important nutrition.

 

To replicate the success of this breakfast seva initiative on a larger scale, Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba formed the Sri Sathya Sai Annapoorna Trust in 2012 serving 60 children in one school, and till Dec 2019 serves 400,000 children every single morning across 4,850  schools in 17 States and 5 Countries.

 

Grama Uddharana and Grama Parivartana – Rural Uplift and Rural Transformation by touching and positively enhancing the lives of children, women, families, communities and the village as a whole, are the goals of the Seva volunteers and the Annapoorna program. Serving breakfast is the first step to addressing the children’s needs. Over time, the education, healthcare, energy and water needs of the village shall also be met simultaneously infusing in people moral and spiritual values to improve the quality of their lives. The provision and sustenance of the four essential needs will make a village independent and bring about individual and collective transformation as they learn to live with and for each other sharing common resources.

 

 

We travel deep to the interior villages of the state and identify government schools where kids from poor backgrounds study. We speak to the head master and/or teachers about serving breakfast to school-going children explaining to them the importance of breakfast and student attendance. If the school officials are supportive then we move forward with the school. We identify local vendors of milk, bananas and other important breakfast items. We register them in ANNAPOORNA and start serving the kids breakfast every school day, encouraging them to attend school where we also teach moral values. This internally helps the village people with livelihood and the entire village flourishes. This gives us a chance to also provide free medical care to the students and provide drinking water to the villages.

 

More than 400,000 children are served breakfast every day. Our Vision is to reach all the students as breakfast is the most important meal for the day.

 

For more information, please visit http://annapoorna.org.in/