A hot meal, every school day
Food at School gives every child at Jepegomi Academy porridge in the morning and a cooked lunch at midday — balanced enough to carry them through a full day of lessons.
Lunch, at the desks the children spend the morning at.
What it is
Morning porridge. A hot lunch. Every school day.
Children at Jepegomi Academy are fed twice a day — porridge when they arrive, and a cooked lunch in the middle of the day. All 131 of them eat this way, every day the school is open.
Why it matters
A well-fed child can concentrate.
Porridge at the start of the day and a plate of rice and beans at midday give a child the carbohydrate and the protein to stay alert through afternoon lessons. That is what the food is for: attention holds, energy holds, and the teaching gets through. A balanced diet is part of the education, not a charity bolted onto the side of it.
Where it is cooked
In a kitchen of its own.
For years the cooking was done outdoors over open flames. A partner church in the United States gave the kitchen that replaced it, and it is where every meal comes from today: a wood-burning jiko under a roof, a store room beside it, and a serving counter the children queue at. It is the single biggest step this program has taken, and we are grateful for it.
The queue, every school day.
Eaten where they are taught.
How every meal was cooked before the kitchen was built.
The kitchen cooks. Next comes the room they eat in.
The gift built the kitchen and did everything it was given for. Three things would finish the job: a water tank to harvest rainwater, cabro stones to floor the area where the children eat, and plastering and electricity in the dining hall.
Read next
- Jepegomi AcademyThe school these meals are cooked for — kindergarten to Grade 6, in classrooms the ministry built itself.
- What's neededThe open ledger: what finishing the dining area costs, line by line, and how much is still short.
- The churchThe congregation in Kahawa Sukari that runs the school and the feeding program.