December 2018
We are happy to announce that thanks to the generous support of a new sponsor, in January 2019 we will start a pilot food program to provide lunches for students. Lunches are very important not only because of the nutritional value, but we also believe it will decrease absenteeism at the schools. We are hopeful that the offer of a free school lunch will trigger students to go to school and importantly, stay until the afternoon. As some students walk for hours to come to school they frequently don’t make the journey every day.
Lunches are currently rare at most of the Kamitei supported schools. During harvest season there are sometimes lunches. However, when the harvest is poor or there is trouble in the community lunches are not provided on a daily basis. We at Kamitei would like to see that students get food on a regular basis especially because breakfast at home is not guaranteed.
To organise lunches for all our students is a big challenge. Not only because of money (it costs one US dollar for each student per day), but also because we need to organise it in a way that we are certain food will end at the plates of the students and not somewhere else.
For the first phase of the pilot we will start at the schools of the Kilimatembo community. We already have built a kitchen at Marar and the kitchens at Gilala and Kilimatembo are for the time being sufficient. At the moment we are discussing with all involved how to realise everything. We will keep you updated on progress and look forward to seeing the data support the impact of the new initiative!
