Feed School Children in Kenya

Last year was another successful year for our school lunch programme, with more than 400,000 meals provided in total to all 2,300+ pupils across our seven partner schools.

The daily cost of the programme continued to fluctuate throughout the year, with the price of maize particularly volatile (ranging from 53p to 80p per kilo). As a result, the programme ended the year slightly over budget, coming in at a total cost of £32,737 against the budget of £31,517. However, this was still around £1,800 less than the cost of the programme in 2018 and more than £10,000 less than in the drought-afflicted year of 2017!

In total we provided almost 65,000 tonnes of dried foodstuffs (maize, rice and beans) this year, as well as 2,220 litres of cooking oil and nearly 800kg of salt! Parents continued to bring firewood for fuelling the energy-efficient stoves in the school kitchens and to pay for the employment of cooks through monthly contributions to the schools’ PTA funds, and water was sourced on-site from rainwater reserves (or from bowser supplies we delivered where these were exhausted).

The donations totalling £2,000 that we received from donors through GlobalGiving was amongst almost £28,000 that we received in restricted funding for the programme in 2019, including donations from trusts, groups and individuals on other platforms.

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Looking ahead to 2020, the seventh full year of this programme, we have budgeted the total cost at some £34,155 (see ‘Feeding Minds 2020 budget’ below).

This year we have made some changes to how we make these estimates and the food prices used in this budget are based on a three-year average over 2017, 2018 & 2019, rather than on the price at the end of the previous year. Nevertheless, given that we purchase food on a monthly basis (it can spoil if we purchase it on a more regular basis) we are particularly susceptible to fluctuations in food prices and we are always at the mercy of drought, floods, pests or anything else that can affect the price of foodstuffs! Indeed, the price we have paid for food for January is already about 5% higher than the budgeted price!

In terms of fundraising, we have already secured more than 50% of the funds we expect we need in 2020 having raised £20,000 in the recent BigGive Christmas Challenge, including £10,000 in donations from 50 individual donors (both existing and first-time) and matched funding of £10,000 from an anonymous trust and our charity champion The Reed Foundation. Additionally, we have a small amount of regular donations totalling about £200 per month which we expect to continue throughout the year.

We do hope that you will be able to continue your support of this vital programme again in 2020. Your on-going support will help us to continue to ensure that hunger does not act as a barrier to learning for disadvantaged school children in this impoverished part of the world.

• Feeding Minds budget for 2020 (PDF)
  

The start of the new school term last week marked six years since the launch of our 'Feeding Minds' lunch programme.

Initially supporting just a single school of 300 pupils we have since extended the programme to all seven of our partner schools (around 2,500 pupils) and have served now almost 2.5 million meals.

There was a slight delay to the programme this term because of difficulties sourcing beans but thankfully the children went without food for just a couple of days. However we have reviewed our processes to see what more we can do to ensure the timely delivery of food whilst accepting that sometimes such delays are entirely out of our control.

Thankfully, the programme is fully-funded until the end of this year thanks to donations we have received via GlobalGiving and elsewhere during the course of this year. If you would like to help us continue the programme in 2020 please do consider donating again or, better still, setting up a recurring monthly donation - just £5 a month provides a daily lunchtime meal to 5 children.

Please donate at www.globalgiving.org/projects/feed-school-children-in-kenya/

Some recent comments received from headteachers:

"We at Kisimeny Primary are grateful for the food supplies for this term. The children cheered loudly on their arrival!"

"Bungule Primary received foodstuffs in good condition and good order. Thanks AP for the tremendous support!"