Ms Maneka Gandhi, launches The Akshaya Patra Foundation’s Coffee Table Book ‘Be Happy’

Mumbai: The AkshayaPatra Foundation, a not-for-profit working towards fighting classroom hunger launched its first coffee table book – ‘Be Happy’, in the presence of MsManeka Gandhi, Cabinet Minister for Women & Child Development. Published by Harper Collins, and photographed by Senthil Kumar and PremJayanth, this book captures the lives of beneficiaries at The AkshayaPatra Foundation, which feeds more than 1.6 million children across the country, through the Government’s Mid-Day Meal Programme.

Senthil Kumar, the photographer behind the beautiful images, was inspired by the smiles the children adorned, their character and their relationship to the world surrounding them, despite the hardships they faced. Senthil Kumar has won several Cannes Lions, Best Photographer Award by Asian Photography magazine, and the title of Most Influential People in Photography award multiple times.

This coffee table book is an ode to the beloved children - beneficiaries of AkshayaPatra. It offers a glimpse of their simple, innocent, fun-filled lives. The pictures in this book tell stories of their homes, parents, and their lives in and outside school. It is a dual celebration, of lives of the children, and AkshayaPatra’s aim of transforming ‘food’ into an enabler of ‘education’. Within the pages, one will find portraits of children that will not only inspire thoughtful conversation, but will also lead to action.