Kathmandu – Food for Life Nepal (FFLN) is a non-profit, non-governmental trust registered under the District Administration Office, Kathmandu, Nepal in 2015 AD. With an aim of breaking the vicious chains of malnourishment and illiteracy, this organization is continuously working daily to provide children with the right nutrition to support their education.
The works of FFLN are inspired by Srila Prabhupada. In 1974, he happened to look out of his room at ISKCON temple in Mayapur, West Bengal of India and saw a group of village children fighting with stray dogs over scraps of food. Astonished and disheartened by what he saw, Srila Prabhupada turned to his disciples and said, ‘No one within 10 miles radius of our temple should go hungry.’
Motivated by the powerful impacts his works made ever since that year in different states of India, involving projects like ‘Annamrita’ and ‘Akshaya Patra’, the initial team of FFLN in 2014, happened to visit a government school named ‘Budhanilkantha Secondary School’ for a survey and found 18 children sleeping in a classroom with a teacher casually sitting on his chair. When the teacher was asked why he wasn’t teaching, he mentioned that even though he wants to teach, he couldn’t because the children have no energy to study nor play due to lack of food. This touched their hearts and, in a quest to solve this issue, they began cooking food for these children from their home kitchens. In a matter of a few weeks, the no. of children escalated to 44. Now, feeding all these hungry kids was impossible from their small home kitchens and they needed something bigger and better, hence leading them to officially establish Food for Life – Nepal in 2015.
Before a nation-wide lockdown was announced in Nepal, FFLN had been serving 6000+ children in 21 community schools daily at Budhanilkantha and Tokha Municipality. Currently, FFLN is providing free mid-day meals to 3472+ children in 15 community schools at Budhanilkantha Municipality and has an objective of serving 10,000 by the end of 2030 AD. Ever since the Mid-Day Meal Program has begun, we at Food for Life – Nepal have seen positive impacts such as increased student enrolment, increased attendance rate, better overall performance and reduction of junk food culture at school and better health. With the rising aim of “No child in Nepal shall be deprived of education because of hunger” we are promoting education through food. And 30 Rupees is enough to feed a child with nutritious hot cooked meals every day.
It is also the first-ever organization in Nepal to have a centralized kitchen solely dedicated to feeding children who are being deprived of their basic rights, which is food. Food for Life – Nepal believes in the vision that a nutritious hot meal prepared with love and care, just how a mother prepares for her child, will bring thousands of children to school every single day. The FFLN team wants this dream to flourish even further, for which they are giving their all to make it come true.
These humanitarian works were only possible because of our generous supporters, well-wishers, individual donors, international donors, and other development partners, who motivate us even more to keep up the good work. The FFLN team is immensely grateful towards them all, without whom these projects wouldn’t have been feasible. Your participation can greatly influence the lives of children and those living in our communities. It will also act as a great source of inspiration for us, to work even harder to fulfil this common goal of promoting education through food.
For the Children.
