Nutrition & Health

Providing healthy, organic, nutritious meals is an essential part of the mission at Ramana’s Garden in order to ensure high quality care and education for children. We believe the benefits yielded by a nutritious diet are all the more important to children who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, as they have not reaped the benefits of having a healthy, rounded diet for their entire lives.

Ramana’s also provides free medical care and clean drinking water both the the resident children and many children and their families in surrounding villages.  Through the years, Ramana’s has assisted in providing equipment and education so that local villages have clean drinking water, basic medical care, improved hygiene and village sanitation, winter clothing, and other essentials.

At Ramana’s Garden, we have the opportunity to practice our philosophy and ideals of a healthy and nutritious diet at the Ramana’s Garden Organic Café. The café, which has operated since 2006 and is a significant source of funding for our home with 100% of the profits being reinvested back in our organization, is emblematic of the day-to-day experience the children at Ramana’s Garden and our organization’s commitment to a healthy, organic, nutritious lifestyle. Read more about the café here.

The Café is primarily supplied through our Ambiya Paradise Organic Garden. After multiple consecutive years of heavy deforestation, reduced rainfall, and global warming, our ability to grow enough organic food to keep our kids healthy had taken a heavy toll. The shorter growing seasons forced us to seek an alternative growing site, which we found nestled deep in the oldest conifer-pine forest of our state of Uttarakhand. 

After much difficult effort and a lot of help from friends, including Sonia Gandhi, whose 1948 amendment that forest property lying in waste should be allocated to social purpose, King Tehri’s former hunting lodge was given renewed purpose. The property was granted on lease to Ramana’s on the condition we would operate the lodge as Eco-tourism. With help of Leap Now students, we renovated it into what has been rated as a top Eco-tourism destination in our state. More than 800 friends new and old visited during our first year, making the venture a good success.  The orchard was revitalized and the vacant terraces put under cultivation producing heaps of yummy organic veggies to supply not only our kids but our Organic Café.

We share our forest with plenty of wildlife, mostly endangered by previous rampant poaching. Leopards, mink, mountain goats, deer, quail, bears, fox, and the ancient trees were all constitute creatures currently at risk. As part of our Eco-tourism commitment to village assistance, along with our core mission to provide education to underprivileged children, we were able to set up two schools in nearby villages funded by the profits coming from the lodge.