In April 2021, we com­menced our pilot school feed­ing pro­gram at Chi­t­u­lik­wa com­mu­ni­ty school as part of our edu­ca­tion sup­port pro­grammes. Chi­t­u­lik­wa com­mu­ni­ty school is locat­ed in a poor neigh­bour­hood of Kabanana East in Lusa­ka Zam­bia. The school has over 160 stu­dents from the ages of 3 years to 17 years and offers edu­ca­tion from Ear­ly Years to 9th Grade. Because most of the chil­dren come from poor house­holds, most of the stu­dents hard­ly have break­fast before attend­ing school. Apart from pro­vid­ing basic nutri­tion, the school feed­ing pro­gram is aimed at increas­ing school atten­dance espe­cial­ly for girls who are usu­al­ly made to stay back at home to help with domes­tic chores or end up in ear­ly mar­riages in a coun­try with high preva­lence of child mar­riages.

Speak­ing at the launch of the school feed­ing pilot, Sim­pact Foun­da­tion Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Ban­ja Mkwanazi Kayum­ba said,’’ It was heart­en­ing to see the faces of the chil­dren at the launch of our school feed­ing pro­gram pilot at Chi­t­u­lik­wa Com­mu­ni­ty School. We believe that every child deserves a chance to have a basic edu­ca­tion and nutri­tion at their crit­i­cal growth stage to achieve their full poten­tial.

We are look­ing for­ward to rolling out our mul­ti-faceted edu­ca­tion pro­grammes to many more com­mu­ni­ty schools so that we can help impact many more vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren. Near­ly 60 per­cent of Zambia’s chil­dren live in poor house­holds and some of those live in a neigh­bour­hood like Kabanana. Through our school feed­ing pro­gramme, it costs only about US$1.50 to feed a child break­fast per month, while that may not seem much to many peo­ple, to a child com­ing from a poor house­hold, it makes a big dif­fer­ence.’’

For 8 year old John who is a stu­dent at the school he was grate­ful to have break­fast at school as his par­ents often strug­gle to pro­vide break­fast before school. John like most chil­dren at the school comes from a poor house­hold in Kabanana where he lives in a three roomed house with five of his sib­lings and his par­ents.