Anyone can provide food to children at schools in Puducherry to celebrate occasions such as birthdays or wedding anniversary, success in exams, and festivals.
Originally, the Gujarat government had started ‘Tithi Bhojan’ in schools on important days to attract community participation in the midday meal. Inspired by the initiative of Gujarat, the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development had recommended to the other States to adopt the scheme.
R. Kalaiselvan, Deputy Director of Mid-day Meal Scheme, Puducherry, said, “Following recommendations of the Union government, we are going to adopt the scheme under the name of ‘anna dhanam’ and have framed the guidelines for its implementation in government schools. We are going to implement it from the coming academic year.”
The objective of the scheme is to ensure community participation in the effort to provide nutritious and healthy food to schoolchildren and to inculcate the feeling of equity and brotherhood among children of all communities and reduction of gap between the school administration and the community. “Donor may be an individual, a family or a group. The occasion may be the birthday or wedding anniversary of the donor or his/her family members or any other happy event in the family such as success in exams or birth and death anniversary of relatives,” an official said.
The donor should ensure the quality of the items and timely supply of food during lunch-break without delay.
A guideline said, “The donor or authorised representatives should take meals or food items along with the children as a gesture of promoting the feeling of equality and oneness among children as otherwise the permission granted will stand cancelled.”
The guidelines also said junk food should not be served. The head of the school should taste the food before serving it to the children to ascertain its quality.
