The Benefits of KCC's Feeding Centres
Our feeding centres are located in some of the most deprived communities in Kenya. Without the hot daily meals that we provide, the children we feed would not eat all day. Many of these children had suffered chronic malnutrition before they came to our centres, which resulted in stunting and slow physical development. They had poor school attendance, limited social skills and low educational performance. Hunger increased their levels of aggression and anxiety, causing bad behaviour and disruption in school and their communities.
The promise of a hot meal motivates and provides the energy for the children to walk to school, where our centres are located. A daily meal rapidly improves their health and helps them catch up with physical and social milestones. It helps them to concentrate in class, improve their behaviour, perform better in exams, and avoid the temptation of petty crime.
We measure the height, weight and school performance of each child at the beginning and end of each term. These data provide concrete evidence of the rapid and significant improvement achieved by the children. With better health and education, our results show that many will leave school with sufficient qualifications to get employment and become self-sufficient adults – our ultimate goal.
1. Improved Health
KCC provides balanced meals that include essential nutrients, promoting better health and development for the child. This leads to better nourishment for the other family members as well. The money that would have been used by the family to feed these children for lunch is saved and that saving is used to provide better balanced diets for the entire family and the entire family’s health improves.
2. Improved Attendance, Focus and Learning
A hungry child can rarely concentrate in their studies with an empty stomach. The lunches that we provide act as an encouragement for the children to attend school not only to enjoy the free lunch but to enjoy studies as well. The children that would have missed school to find casual jobs in order to feed themselves are easily retained in school and truancy is always reduced. There is always improved individual performance and overall school performance where we run the feeding centres.
3. Social Interaction
We see the children creating friendships as they enjoy lunch. The experience gained during hot lunches enable them to develop friendships outside school too. Our social workers observe during home visits, that a child will now be able to give directions to the homes of other children they have met. They find that the social network of parents and guardians also expand through their children’s new friendships.
4. Support for Low Income Families
When KCC provides hot lunches for the children in school, the parents are able to focus on providing food for the other family members. They are able to feed the other children better diets, which improves their health. The parents are able to save some money that can be used to feed the children during the school holidays
5. Reduced Financial Burden
The financial anxiety of the parents is reduced because we provide a nutritious lunch to the children in school. This eases the parent’s financial worries because there are less bills to pay for medicines when children are healthier, and parents have more time to make extra coins from casual jobs since their children are now regularly in school.
6. Tailor Made Solutions
As our social workers spend time at the Feeding Centres to monitor progress, they are able to spot children who may require more than just a meal. KCC is able to offer a tailor-made solution to that child/family. For example, we pay for school uniforms, school books, school fees, and healthcare for some of the children.
7. Low Cost and Scalable Feeding Centres
We have set up and run feeding centres for 10 years and developed a successful operating model. We are recognised by the Kenya Government and individual schools for our contribution to improving child development, school attendance and performance.
Our Feeding Centres are located in slums and remote impoverished rural communities. They are low cost, easy to establish and can be set up in almost any location, and alongside any size of school – large or small. We work in partnership with teachers, community elders and local government organisations to plan, create and run the centres.
We provide a hot daily meal for a total cost of 17p per child – that’s £5 per month. We can rapidly build and equip a simple kitchen next to a school at short notice for £3,000. We recruit a local cook, and provide the ingredients for the meals and the fuel to cook them. Distribution of the meals is assisted by the teachers, who also help to identify the most needy children who require free meals and any other support that they feel is necessary.
The total cost of food, fuel and wages for a centre serving 100 children is 17p per child per day. We can easily provide more feeding centres with this approach. They would feed hundreds of other vulnerable and malnourished children – our only limitation is the amount of funding that we can raise to pay for the running costs.