By Sandy Coburn | Manager, Integrated Fund Development
Molly is thirteen years old from the Mathare slum in Nairobi, Kenya. She's one of the 20 million children around the world who get a nourishing meal at school thanks to World Food Program.
Although Molly doesn’t have much at home, she’s like any other girl of her age: she has her favorite music, her favorite games and her best friends. She also has hopes for the future. One of them is to help her generation look after the environment better.
In order to work towards her goals and lift herself out of poverty, Molly needs to be strong, physically and mentally. And she needs a good education. Fortunately, she’s moving in the right direction.
Thanks to the nutritious WFP meals she gets at school every day, she can stay healthy and concentrate on her lessons. The result is that Molly has a good chance of growing into a strong woman who will earn a living and be able to keep her family free of hunger. In short, those daily meals at school are feeding her future.
And like Molly, there are millions of other adolescent girls in poor countries around the world who are receiving school meals from WFP. This is one of the ways WFP is helping the women of tomorrow achieve their potential.
Last year, WFP gave her a small video camera and asked her to record scenes from her daily life. Watch the Molly’s World video by clicking the link below and get to know this incredible young girl!
The Coins 4 Kids campaign has fed 72,000 children in almost 100 schools in Nairobi since its inception in 2004.
WFP believes that no child should attend school hungry. The fortified food offered by WFP strengthens a child’s body and mind, and may be eaten as a nutritious breakfast or a mid-morning snack. Take-home rations of rice or cooking oil also create incentives for families to send their daughters to school. Coins 4 Kids volunteers will receive a kit with tools for raising awareness and funds, including coin-collection cups, brochures, donation forms, a tabletop display, fact sheet, coordinator guide, and DVD. For each Coins 4 Kids cup that a volunteer fills with change, WFP will feed a child for an entire school year.
The Coins 4 Kids campaign funds WFP’s School Meals program. The School Meals program in Nairobi, Kenya, where Molly lives, is one of the most effective ways to fight hunger as children are guaranteed at least one healthy meal per day. Just 25 cents will feed a child for a day. This amount can fill a cup with porridge, rice, or beans, or give a take-home ration. Each year, WFP provides about 25 million school children with meals that they can’t get at home. WFP’s meals allow children to do better in school and break the cycle of poverty. Approximately $1.2 billion can feed the 23 million primary school-age children in Africa who attend school hungry.
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