Kheya & Lila went to an ice cream shop on a hot Sunday evening. After tasting all the flavours, Lila ordered for a scoop of Splish-splash flavour and Kheya chose Cotton Candy. While they were about to eat the ice cream, Lila said “ We forgot the toppings!”. Listening to this, the ice cream seller took a note of their names & age for a small surprise . Lila screamed “ Wow! Thanks so much Uncle“ , when she saw the topping “Kheya @ 7” and “Lila @ 7” with their favourite Rainbow sprinkles on their Ice creams.
On their way back home, slowly enjoying their ice cream, Lila asked “ Kheya, Do you want to taste my ice cream?”
Kheya was very happy on listening to this and said “ Yes, You know me very well”.
Lila shared her ice cream and waved a good bye saying “ Lets meet at school tomorrow”.
Next day at school , Kheya noticed Lila wasting food and she was not happy with it.She thought, ”Uff! Even though it’s her favourite dish in the lunch box ?”.
In their Maths class the teacher asked Kheya , “ Can you tell the class any multiplication word problem?“ Kheya took this as a chance and went on saying, “My friend wastes 1 Roti every day and she has been getting her lunch box to school for 4 years. We come to school for nearly 200 days in a year. How many Rotis did she waste in total?”
Lila was the first one to answer.“800 Rotis!”
Teacher replied, “Yes you are right, Lila!” and as the bell rings, teacher instructs the kids to form a line to the play ground.On the way to the ground, Lila whispered to Kheya “ I feel bad that I wasted food. I will never waste food again”. Kheya replied “Hey Lila ! I wonder how much food is being wasted in our school…in our City..in our Country..in the WORLD everyday!”
After recess, Kheya and Lila went to their Principal and Lila said, “Sir! I just realised in my Maths class that I wasted 800 Rotis in school alone.I feel ashamed! We need to do something to solve the food wastage problem in our school.”
Then the Principal came up with an Idea saying, “Pack the leftover food with the help of kitchen staff, get into the school buses and we are going on a field trip!”. Strangely, the busses stopped near a beggar and thier principal asked to handover a food pack to him. This repeated till all the food packs were distributed. Kheya was excited and asked their principal “ Sir ! Can we do this everyday when going back to home?”. He happily said “Yes! Ofcourse Kheya, you initiated a ‘Zero Hunger Program’ “ and this became a routine.
After few months, serving the needy by children from school buses became viral on social media and Kheya’s Zero Hunger Program became popular.
One fine day, to everyone’s surprise the PM tweeted “Lets pledge for a Zero Hunger World! Thanks @kheya for the great initiative. Proud to have both Zero & Zero Hunger Program initiated from India”
From then on, all schools started following the “Zero Hunger Program “ all over the world.
By Kritya Ajjarapu, 7 Years
