Probably thought, how do you even approach a problem like that . The most tempting answer is that solving global poverty just cant be done. Spend your billions of dollars, give your speeches. Its not going to help. Nice try. But a better answer is this. There might not be a Silver Bullet for poverty, but there are a whole lot of great ideas out there, ideas that are helping people on a daily basis, and one good idea, big or small, really can change lives. Take this idea. There really is such a thing as a free lunch. Now consider india, home to 1. 2 billion people. Thats 17 of the planet, so its no surprise that indias problems, poverty, hunger, tend to be big. But the Indian Government is thinking just as big when it comes to fighting hunger, and theyre fighting that battle one lunch at a time. This viewchange film tells the story. Amos roberts its Early Morning in a small village not far from the city of bangalore. Kuma is cleaning the rickshaw that provides his familys livelihood. His wife nakama is washing the familys few dishes. And their children are getting ready for school. Abilash, however, cant find his school shirt. Amos kuma but doesnt earn enough to buy spare shirts for the children. After paying for the hire of his rickshaw, hes lucky to make 4. 00 or 5. 00 a day, so clothes get held together with safety pins for as long as possible. While abilash helps his dad fix a puncture, his brother and sister have leftover rice for breakfast. Their parents go without. Amos these kids are lucky. Millions of indian children go to school on empty stomachs, their families too poor to give them breakfast or even lunch. But thanks to a quiet culinary revolution, they dont have to go hungry any longer. In a tiny kitchen on the school grounds, these two cooks are preparing lunch for 120 children. Theyve been doing it six days a week for the past four years. They clearly remember their own long, Hungry School days. Amos right now, meals like this are being prepared for 150 million schoolchildren across india. Following a landmark decision by the Supreme Court in 2001, State Governments were ordered to provide free meals for all primary schoolchildren age 10 and under. Last year, the scheme was expanded to include children up to the age of 13, but some states are going even further. The Southern State of karnataka is extending its lunch scheme all the way up to year 10. Vijay vascar so the scale of the program is mindboggling. This is the largest such program in the world and largest such program in the country itself. Amos Vijay Bhaskar administers the scheme in karnataka. Hes responsible for feeding seven million children every day. He says that before the lunches were provided, poor parents often sent their children to work, and about a million kids were out of school. Vijay after about six years of this program, the latest data, the census which we did in 2007 shows that the number of children who are out of school was reduced to 70,000. So from one million, it has come down to 70,000. So this i would largely say impact is due to the midday meal scheme. [speaking foreign language] amos the principal of this school says students now find it easier to concentrate, and classrooms are getting crowded. Amos today the cooks are preparing sambar, a staple south indian dish thats like a soupy vegetable curry with lentils. This simple meal is also being used as an instrument of social change. The State Government insists at least one cook in every kitchen must be from the socalled untouchable castes. [bell rings] [speaking foreign language] amos in many states, lunch has become a onestop shop for childrens health. Apart from the nutritional value of the cooked lunch, these kids also get vitamin a, iron, folic acid, and deworming tablets with their meals. Amos abilash is responsible for supervising the meal. Amos at least one of the children here doesnt even get one homecooked meal. He has to beg for his supper. Amos do you look forward to lunch each day . [translator speaking foreign language] amos well, i dont know what australian kids would make of this meal, but i thought it was delicious and it certainly beats the sandwiches that i took to school. But more importantly, while governments in the west and Celebrity Chefs like jamie oliver agonize over what to do about nutrition for kids, india has actually gone ahead and done something about it. And after a satisfying lunch, what better way to relax than by reading the paper . Instead of running around after their heavy meal, the kids here are taught to read aloud from old newspapers. [reading in foreign language] amos while most Indian Schools cook their own lunches each day, some are getting outside help on a massive scale. Many schools now have their midday meals massproduced in hightech kitchens like this one. Man we can see the blending of the masala. Amos okay. Its the result of collaboration between State Governments and a religious group familiar to many in the west. Man now we are entering the production area. Amos the Hare Krishna Movement prepares 820,000 lunches in kitchens like this every school day. They call it a Gravity Force kitchen. Man we have threestory silos on the top of this floor, one for lentils and two for rice. Amos rice and lentils come from silos on the roof and are washed on the top floor of the kitchen. This is also where the vegetables are prepared, spices are ground, and chilies and curry leaves are fried. Then theyre all poured down chutes into waiting cauldrons on the floor below. The food is cooked with steam generated by giant furnaces, and then its ready to drop down to the next floor. Man when the sambar is ready, and from the processing area, food is going to the packing area through this chute and this turner. Amos finally, the containers of food are packed onto a fleet of custombuilt vehicles, which deliver the meals to schools in and around bangalore. [speaking foreign language] amos the logistics are so remarkable that mba students from Harvard Business school are using it as a case study of time management. Madhu pandit das i think there is anot i think. We definitely feel that theres a divine touch in the food that comes out of these kitchens. Theres a divine touch. Theres a special taste to it. This is called raita. Amos raita . So yogurt and some vegetables . Madhu yogurt and some vegetables. Amos Madhu Pandit Das is the hare krishna missionary and engineer who designed the Gravity Force kitchen. Madhu you know, some of these processes are so laborious, we could have actually done away with it, but still we do it. For instance, coconut grating. To grate coconut to put in sambar for 100,000 children is no joke. We could easily avoid coconut. It doesnt make much difference. But it makes a difference in the taste, because sambar means it has to have coconut. Amos if the dish is called sambar madhu yeah, it has to have coconut. Amos there are 4,500 schools eagerly waiting for their meals. And each van visits roughly a dozen of them. Considering the state of the roads. [horns honk] and the traffic, it seems miraculous that the lunches reach the schools on time. This roads pretty rough. Man yes, most of the roads are similar. This is a better road which we are traveling. There are a few roads which we take which are very bad roads. We cannot go even two kilometers per hour. Thats how slow we go. Its such a horrible road. Amos because the Hare Krishna Movement tops up government funding with donations from its members, it can spend more on meals than individual schools. It also adopts regional menus in different parts of india, churning out raita and meat curries in the north, for example. The man who designed the kitchen says it can be replicated anywhere in the world, and it could even help cure the obesity epidemic in the west. Madhu so lets say if we are to go to the u. S. And do Something Like this for the children. Well find out whats their local palate, and then well use the technology and well scale it up. And its possible to design a menu which will address obesity, junk food, you know, which destroys the childrens health. Amos even in india, schools are becoming targets for junk food. Theres been a push recently by biscuit manufacturers to have their products included in the lunch menu. But the man who runs the program here says there will be no cookies in karnataka. Vijay well, i would only say that children would like only a hot cooked midday meal because any person who has seen children eating a hot meal will know that no cookie can substitute for it. Amos how important are these meals to these particular children . Narrator a program that big isnt cheap, but its amazingly efficient. These lunches cost less than six rupees a piece. Thats less than 13 cents, and with dropout rates down across the country, theyre worth every penny. Coming up next, an even simpler idea to fight hunger hidden in your average jar of Peanut Butter. Malawi, to put it simply, has a food problem. There isnt always enough of it, and there are rarely enough nutrients in what there is. Children get hit hardest here. Last year, more than 50 suffered from stunted growth. But in 1996, a nutritionist named andre briend decided to take on severe malnutrition everywhere with one idea. If theres no cheap nutritious superfood out there, why not invent one . He did, and today his formula is used around the world. See what happens in this film when briends superfood is put to work in malawi. Narrator malnutrition. Every year, malnutrition kills twice as many children as aids, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. Yet there is hope. An inexpensive, revolutionary therapy is saving childrens lives right now. Since 2004, project Peanut Butter has been treating children in malawi, a country with one of the highest malnutrition rates in the world. [speaking foreign language] narrator as a faculty member at Washington University medical school, dr. Manary founded project Peanut Butter to bring the most effective malnutrition therapy to the children who need it most. Alefa is seven months old. She is just entering the critical six month to twoyearold window where children are most vulnerable to the impact of malnutrition. Jason reinking alefa is severely malnourished and marasmic, as you can see from the extremely small arms. Narrator severely malnourished children at this age are at great risk. Untreated, more than half will die. Pilirani is two years old. Severely malnourished kids often swell up with edema, a painful buildup of fluid under the skin. Piliranis swelling is so severe he can barely walk. Until recently, the best treatment available for pilirani and alefa was one to two months of hospitalization. But even in the best rural hospitals, only 25 to 40 of children fully recover. Project Peanut Butter gets much better results by distributing a special, ready to use, therapeutic food to the mothers, who will take it with them and treat their own children at home. Ready to use therapeutic food is powerful medicine. This peanutbased formula is effective, easy to use, and empowers mothers. And most kids love it. Its more than just Peanut Butter. Over years of careful experiments and testing, dr. Manary and his colleagues developed a new formula. Its a precise blend ideal for bringing children back from the edge of starvation. The results are dramatic. Six weeks after their first visit, alefa and pilirani return for one of their checkups. Jason what weve seen over the course of the last six weeks has been really good progress, so were hopeful that shell come completely up to a healthy weight for this child. Narrator after six weeks of treatment, pilirani is on a promising path. He is now likely to remain healthy and avoid lingering consequences. Dr. Mark manary 95 of these children are recovering. 95 . That is really something powerful. [singing in foreign language] narrator and the success rate comes at a fraction of the old therapys cost. Today, saving one child costs the project a total of about 25. Project Peanut Butter has an ambitious vision to save over two million children from severe malnutrition by 2015. Rosemary godwa i wish project Peanut Butter would grow like the bao bao tree, which start smaller and grows big, big, big, bigger, and biggest. So it can reach every needy child. Narrator the beauty of briends project is that its a simple idea writ large. His work has spread to four continents, but it began with a simple formula and a plan to grow. The point is that a good idea is a spark. Its not enough on its own, but it is enough to ignite something bigger, and spark by spark, the world can change. Announcer want to learn more about free lunches, superfood, or anything else you saw here . Head over to viewchange. Org tv or you can watch, read, and get involved in projects that are making a real difference. Watch the films you just saw and over 350 more from around the world at viewchange. Org tv. Auauaua0uao we coevolve with our tools. We change our tools, and then our tools change us. Certainly the book has probably changed us more than any other tool. For 500 years, its been this incredibly important tool for humanity. Books are the foundation of civilization. You walk into someones house, whats the first thing you look at as aa literate human being . You look at their library. This can sound romantic, but the feel of a book, thethe texture of the paper, even its smell. They are the best way of preserving information ever invented. But in the digital, age we really have to start questioning what a book really is