School Meals
A Lifeline Keeping Faith in School
Meet Faith.
Faith is a fifteen-year-old girl living in Kenya. Her dream is to become a teacher so she can give back to her family and community.
Despite being just a few hours away from Kenya’s tropical coast city of Mombasa, her home village is dry and dusty. Rain has always been unpredictable and the drought has pushed many households into desperation with an increasing hunger crisis.
As a young girl, Faith has already witnessed the desperate lengths children will go to for food...
Faith talks of girls who marry the ‘boys on motorbikes’ who ferry passengers around the dry, dusty villages of southern Kenya, because they earn money.
Other girls her age and even younger have ended up pregnant to the motorcyclists, dropping out of school early to become teenage mums.
Faith says that many children are working to help their families eat, as successive droughts push households further into desperation to cover the bare essentials to live.
"We go to cut trees to make charcoal for sale so that we can get food... sometimes we would force ourselves to cut trees while feeling hungry.”
— Faith, 15, Kenya
Primary head teacher, William, says hunger had caused many children to drop out of school, simply because they were too weak to walk there.
The children that do make it to school, often struggle to concentrate due to low energy. Their bodies and minds simply do not have enough healthy and nutritious foods to fuel their needs to grow.
“Parents began resorting to leaving their children behind for days at a time while they went to other areas where bigger trees grow, to make charcoal to sell at the market. The money they earn is rarely enough to cover the families’ needs, but people in the area have no other way to make a living.”
– William, Head Teacher, Kenya
In January of 2023, World Vision introduced a school meals programme to support students with urgently needed food aid.
Supplies of maize, beans and cooking oil were provided for every student at 12 schools in the region.
The impact was immediate.
In the first term alone, school attendance in Faith's school rose by about 40 students. World Vision provided a second supply of school meals in Term 2, with donations from local staff supplementing funds from sponsors.
“When you arrive at school and have not eaten at home, sometimes you get into class, and attend one lesson and the following lesson you feel sleepy because of hunger. When I finish schooling, by the grace of God, He enables me to grasp what I learn. I promise to educate myself to get work and be able to support my parents.”
– Faith, 15, Kenya
“Now, I come to school because I get a meal at lunch time. If I stay home, there is no food to eat.”
– Faith, 15, Kenya
Last year, World Vision, with the support of governments and partners, provided healthy and nutritious school meals for over 1.3 million children in 20 countries.
To put it into perspective, these meals are often the only food the children had access to.
Before, Faith was at risk of child marriage and dropping out of school entirely. Now, she looks forward to learning and can work towards her dream of becoming a teacher
All because of school meals.
School meals have the power to change the world.
World Vision stands alongside children like Faith in calling for Governments to expand the coverage of healthy and nutritious school meals.
Act now and call for every child to receive a healthy and nutritious school meal.
