大象传媒

This year’s Global Champion Award was presented to Akshaya Patra - the world’s largest charity-run school meals project.

School children eating lunch (Credit: Akshaya Patra)

Akshaya Patra believes that no child should be deprived of education because of hunger. It recognises that children may forego education to do menial jobs to earn enough money to eat, and even if they do make it to the classroom, an empty stomach can make it hard to concentrate.

It started its mid-day meals programme in 2000. Back then it provided 1,500 free school lunches every day. Today it feeds 1.76 million children all over India with hot, freshly prepared meals. For many, this will be their main source of nutrition and keep them in education.

Akshaya Patra was chosen by an international panel of judges from nominations sent in by the World Service audience.

Head judge, Iranian-American writer, chef and Netflix star Samin Nosrat, said: "There is nothing more important to me than getting children fed. There are so many studies have proven that this is fundamental. I’m really moved by getting school lunches paid for in the States, and so to see it being done on such a large scale and in such an incredible way by Akshaya Patra - that was a really moving and powerful thing to see."

This is the third year The Food Chain has presented its Global Champion Award. It looks for a person or project who has:

• Changed the way we deal with our food, from its production to its presentation and consumption.
• Challenged established methods or practices
• Inspired others to continue with their work
• Whose ideas have had a lasting effect on our relationship with food

This year’s finalists were:

• Lucy May - founder of The Organic Cookery School
• Richard Swannell - development director at WRAP, a UK charity aiming to reduce waste across a range of sectors.
• CGIAR - the world’s largest international agricultural research for development partnership.
• Food 4 Education - a non-profit organisation which provides heavily subsidised meals at primary schools in Nairobi, Kenya

Find out more about last year's winner

• The 大象传媒, its sub-contractors, subsidiaries and/or agencies cannot accept any responsibility whatsoever for any technical failure or malfunction or any other problem which may result in any nomination not being properly registered. Proof of sending is not proof of receipt. The closing date for entries is 23:59 GMT on the 3rd March 2019
• Please make sure you read through the description and the word count. Make sure you clearly explain how your nomination meets, or exceeds, the criteria in the description. The 大象传媒 has the right to disqualify entries that don’t contain the information requested on the nomination pages.
• All entries will be sent to members of The Food Chain team to be processed and checked against the criteria before being sent to the judges for consideration.
• The judges work alone to select a ‘long list’ for shortlisting. All judges are listed on the Food Chain website.
• You can nominate yourself or the organisation or company you work for. However, you will need to state if you are nominating your own business.
• The judges are independent and have been selected for their knowledge in the various category areas. They all see the long lists, and their decisions are final.
• It will not be possible to update you on the outcome of your individual nomination. We may contact the nominees directly for further details, but all those shortlisted will be contacted personally by end March 2019. The judges will then together decide on a winner from the shortlist.
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• A press release will be issued with details of finalists in each category, and a later release will name the winners. The finalists will also be announced on the 大象传媒 World Service The Food Chain Programme and the 大象传媒 Radio 4 Food Programme and will be listed on the website at the end of June 2019.
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Judges for 2019

• Samin Nosrat: Head judge
• Gaggan Anand
• Arnold Kreilhuber
• Mavis Nducha
• Marion Nestle