SAN JOSE, CA – The Akshaya Patra Foundation was honored Nov 19 as a winner of the 2009 Tech Awards in the education category. The Tech Awards, presented by Applied Materials, Inc., is one of the premier annual humanitarian awards programs in the world, recognizing technical solutions that benefit humanity and address the most critical issues facing our planet and its people.

The cash prize winners were announced during the awards ceremony held at a formal gala in San Jose attended by more than 1,500 people, including Silicon Valley industry giants, eminent philanthropists and political leaders. Nobel Laureate and former Vice President Al Gore was also honored during the ceremony with the 2009 James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award.

 “I am honored to accept this award on behalf of the 1.2 million children that we serve daily,” said Madhu Sridhar, Akshaya Patra President and CEO during her acceptance speech. This remark was met to a thunderous applause. “I would also like to recognize the contributions of all those who work in the kitchens, who wake up at 2:30 in the morning to cook delicious meals for these children. They are the real heroes.”

Akshaya Patra, the world’s largest NGO-run midday meal program, provides freshly prepared, wholesome meals to over one million under-served children daily in over 6,000 schools. This meal is an incentive for children to come to school, stay in school and provides them with the necessary nutrients they need to develop their cognitive abilities to focus on learning. The program is a strategic intervention aimed at unlocking the vicious cycle of poverty and hunger.

“The Laureates’ awe-inspiring innovations are a powerful incentive for us to consider our individual responsibility to contribute to positive change around the world,” said Peter Friess, president of The Tech Museum, said. “Tonight we have seen what happens when we harness the very best of ourselves with the express purpose of developing innovative ideas for a more promising future.”

The awards program honors 15 innovators annually alongside the recipient of the Global Humanitarian Award. Laureates are selected by a prestigious panel of international judges organized by the Santa Clara University’s Center for Science, Technology, and Society, and made up of Santa Clara University faculty as well as leaders from educational and research institutions, industry and the public sector around the world

After accepting the award, Akshaya Patra USA Board Chair Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande discussed Akshaya Patra’s global model of efficiency and ingenuity, “We all seek answers to pressing challenges and try to find ways to have a positive impact. Organizations that address vital issues and offer a real possibility of bringing about change attract individuals and activists and keep them engaged. Akshaya Patra is doing just that - effectively addressing the seemingly insurmountable problems of hunger, malnourishment, poverty and education by efficiently leveraging state of the art technology in a country as enormous and as diverse as India.”