A program of Jepegomi Academy
A hot meal, every school day
Food at School gives children at Jepegomi Academy morning porridge and a cooked lunch — for many of them, the most reliable meal of their day.
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
For many, this is the meal they can count on.
A number of the children come from homes that cannot reliably put food on the table. The meal at school is the one they know is coming. A fed child can learn; a hungry one cannot.
The challenge today
It is all cooked outdoors, on open fires.
There is no kitchen. Meals are cooked over open flames in the open air — slow, unsafe in bad weather, smoky, and hard to keep clean. There is nowhere proper to store food and nowhere for the children to sit and eat.
The queue, every school day.
Eaten where they are taught.
How every meal was cooked before the kitchen was built.
What's changing
A proper kitchen is being built
With a partner church in the United States, we are building a real kitchen — with a store room and a dining area — to replace the open fires. The walls are up and the roof is on.