Kosher Education for Homes, Kitchens and Agencies

KIA opened in 2019 with a course for people keeping kosher at home. The AKO Mashgiach Course came next, and the institute now trains home cooks, kitchen staff, mashgichim and certification agencies on five continents.

KIA built the AKO Mashgiach Course to create a single, high-quality, universally recognized training standard for mashgichim, so that a mashgiach trained in London, Mexico City, or Houston all receive the same foundational education, to the same standard, and agencies everywhere can trust that credential.

The institute writes the courses, sets the exams and keeps the record of who has been trained, so an agency can confirm a credential before it puts somebody to work. It also builds KIA OS, the software agencies run their supervision on, from the establishments they certify to the mashgichim they send out.

And it publishes free material for anybody who wants it: a kosher library, a dictionary of kosher terms and a produce inspection course that costs nothing. KIA is a training center, not a certifying body. It does not certify establishments and it does not approve mashgichim; those decisions belong to the agencies.