Anand K Kadali’s talk at WHEELS Global Foundation event
WHEELS Global Foundation (WGF) is an independent organization by IIT Alumni with a mission to give back to society through collaborative partnerships with like-minded organizations across India and the US. The WGF program is dedicated to providing innovative technology-driven solutions to the challenges that affect the global rural population in six areas: –Water, Healthcare, Energy, Education, Livelihood, Sustainability. This foundation is an effort inspired by the ex-President of India, Late APJ Abdul Kalam’s address to IIT alumni in 2006 to improve the lives of ‘Rurban’ India.
The Foundation’s Newborn Nutritional Health Initiative aims to expand the successful efforts of IIT Bombay’s Health Spoken Tutorials (HST) team towards combating the issues of newborn malnutrition. This newborn nutritional health program is complemented by Annapoorna Trust and The Akshaya Patra Foundation, both of which provide daily nutritious meals to several million underprivileged schoolchildren in rural India.
According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) in India, 36% of children are stunted, 32% are underweight and 21% are wasted. These issues are mostly occurring due to widespread poor breastfeeding practices. The scaling of deployment of the Newborn Nutrition Health program with RIST (Rural India Supporting Trust) is set to impact more than 10 million mothers and babies in Madhya Pradesh.
On 9th April 2024, the Consulate General of India in New York hosted a Press Event for WHEELS to discuss the ‘Deployment of our Newborn Nutritional Health Solution in Madhya Pradesh, India’ along with several well-known IIT alumni, and its partners – Annapoorna Trust and Akshaya Patra Foundation.
Mr. Anand K Kadali, Trustee and Executive Secretary of Annapoorna Trust spoke at the event and began by saying he would talk on behalf of our Chairman, Sadguru Sri Madhusudan Sai, who is a philanthropist and a global humanitarian who is working on 3 important verticals – Right to Education, Right to Healthcare and Right to Nutrition. He further elaborated on the 27 educational campuses established by our organization to provide completely free of cost education to the rural poor, India’s first free medical college that provides medical services and medical education to the rural poor, a multi-specialty hospital, and 7 paediatric heart care hospitals that largely focus on congenital heart diseases catering to the requirements of rural hinterlands of India. He apprised the gathering about how Annapoorna Trust is serving morning nutrition to nearly 10 million children every morning and further added that the Trust looks forward to collaboration with Wheels Global Foundation for the enhancement of the morning nutrition program.
Good Nutrition at a young age is very vital to the future growth and development of children. It is important that we recognize the need for good health and well-being of the underserved communities and work towards building the nation through nutrition and an equitable society for all.
