Program
Our approach is simple and effective, providing a meal a day in school keeps the children in school instead of working to try and pay for food. Keeping them in school and giving them an education is vital to break the cycle of poverty.
Looking carefully the program is effective because its multi-faceted. Food is scarce in child-headed homes, so the program takes care of the nutritional needs of school children and income-generation for poor rural farmers.
Food is purchased in bulk from impoverished farmers and disseminated to eLangeni Primary (630 children) and eLangeni Secondary (630 children) Schools. This food serves as a school lunch every day for the children consisting of mealies or rice, beans, fresh vegetables and a weekly serving of chicken or beef. A small portion of donations are are used to deliver emergency meal packages to child-headed homes in times when school is out of session. Most of these children rely on the daily school lunch as their only means of nutrition, so it is vital to address their food scarcity when school is suspended for holidays. These food packs consist of cooking oil, matches, mealies, beans, brown sugar, canned fish, rice, salt, peanut butter, and soup mix.
For the last 3 years since this program has been in place, over 1,000 children have been fed on a regular basis. Many depend ont his meal for their survival. It is common to hear the child head of the household say that the hardest aspect of their lives is when their younger siblings come to them with hunger and they have to tell them there is no food. Help us give them a hand up so they can concentrate in school, work hard, and lift themselves out of this cycle of poverty.
Involving the community in this cycle i.e. buying local farm produce creates a source of employment and support for the school. Education takes ideas and awareness into the community to help create enterprise. This has a compounding impact for the economic development of a rural economy.
This approach is very cost effective and we manage to reach a large number of families with limited resources.
$1 is paying for the food for a child for an entire month!
Looking carefully the program is effective because its multi-faceted. Food is scarce in child-headed homes, so the program takes care of the nutritional needs of school children and income-generation for poor rural farmers.
Food is purchased in bulk from impoverished farmers and disseminated to eLangeni Primary (630 children) and eLangeni Secondary (630 children) Schools. This food serves as a school lunch every day for the children consisting of mealies or rice, beans, fresh vegetables and a weekly serving of chicken or beef. A small portion of donations are are used to deliver emergency meal packages to child-headed homes in times when school is out of session. Most of these children rely on the daily school lunch as their only means of nutrition, so it is vital to address their food scarcity when school is suspended for holidays. These food packs consist of cooking oil, matches, mealies, beans, brown sugar, canned fish, rice, salt, peanut butter, and soup mix.
For the last 3 years since this program has been in place, over 1,000 children have been fed on a regular basis. Many depend ont his meal for their survival. It is common to hear the child head of the household say that the hardest aspect of their lives is when their younger siblings come to them with hunger and they have to tell them there is no food. Help us give them a hand up so they can concentrate in school, work hard, and lift themselves out of this cycle of poverty.
Involving the community in this cycle i.e. buying local farm produce creates a source of employment and support for the school. Education takes ideas and awareness into the community to help create enterprise. This has a compounding impact for the economic development of a rural economy.
This approach is very cost effective and we manage to reach a large number of families with limited resources.
$1 is paying for the food for a child for an entire month!
