Education Sierra Leone Project #29325

The kids kitchen: daily meals in the wake of Covid

by Bread and Water for Africa UK

The kids kitchen: daily meals in the wake of Covid

Project Report | Mar 8, 2021
A local community proud of its school garden

By Daphne Davies | Volunteer journalist

As we reported in the autumn, the We Are The Future School was closed during the summer term because of Covid restrictions. Instead, the School was transformed into be a local hub, from which water, detergent, facemarks and food were delivered to. The kitchen garden continued to function and WAF distributed food to the local community.

The school and kitchen-garden re-open in October

In autumn 2020 the school re-opened with normal classes, and parents were confident enough to send their children back to school. The children and staff all wore masks in the classrooms, and regular handwashing and social distancing were maintained. The school roll is 238, with equal numbers of boys and girls, a very positive sign, given that many families do not feel it is worth educating girls. The term continued as normal, with end of term exams.

Normal garden production restarted in October with the same very good quality fresh supplies of green vegetables: lettuce, green beans, peppers, kale, spinach, spring onions, cassava and potato leaves on a daily basis, providing healthy meal for the 238 children.

Full tummies mean better grades

School staff have noted a continual significant reduction in school dropout, absenteeism and lateness, as children do not have to take time off to help their parents forage for food. A regular meal means there is a sharp drop in malnutrition among young children which accounted for most of the sick cases or in the worst case, death, before the project began.

Children’s grades improve year-on-year thanks to regular daily meals. In 2019 there was a 78% pass in the West African Examination Council-National Primary School Examination, required to enter Junior Secondary School. In 2020 this had risen to an incredible 92% pass rate.

The community sees the school as its own and are very proud of every success, and the example of the garden has encouraged some parents to start to cultivate their own small kitchen gardens.

A new water tower will help the school, and the local community.

GFYA is now fundraising for a water tower to supply the kitchen garden. It would provide 10,000 litres of water and enough pressure to operate a drip irrigation system, reducing watering time by 70%. The new water supply, drilled from underground would be purer, increasing the quality of the crops, and produce clean water for 300 local households, as well as extending the garden so it could feed a neighbouring school of 450 children as well.

Little By Little Campaign: your donation goes the extra mile

GlobalGiving is running the Little By Little campaign. Every donation up to $50 between March 8th till the 12th, will be matched 50% by GlobalGiving. For example, if you give $0, that's $30 that will go to the project - at no extra cost to you - to help more children like Martin get the education they need to look forward to a brighter future.

I know you probably have a lot on your mind right now, but I hope you'll consider making a small gift, that would help GFYA extend the kitchen garden and hopefully be able to construct the water tower soon.

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Nov 3, 2020
A strong community is a resilient community!

By Ramona Engler | Charity Coordinator

Women received her food rations

Maria aged 35 is a mother of three children; Sahr aged 5 years in Nursery II, Tenneh aged 10 years in primary class 4 and Faith aged 12 years in primary class 6. Her husband who is a private soldier was sent to work in the boarder close to Liberia, and is married to another woman with 3 other children. To maintain her own children, Maria sells Arts and Craft along the beach, and she also owns a stall to display her goods. Her trade largely depends on the tourism sector, which is one of the most affected sector by the COVID-19 in Sierra Leone.

Maria used to buy books, bags, shoes and uniform for all her children before the reopening of schools for every new school year. All the three children were promoted to a new class and that brought joy to Maria and the children. The sad part of it is that because of the impact of COVID-19 she couldn’t save money to buy books, bags, shoe and new uniform for them to start the new school year in their new classes. She decided to come to the school to ask for help.

Bread and Water for Africa are currently working hard to raise funds to help Maaria and other mothers like her.

Key Achievments: As schools in Sierra Leone are currently closed due to the lockdown measure, this also means doors of the Kids Kitchen have to remain closed too. To be able to still help the community and continue to support the families in need, the Project became creative and reallocated its funds. Due to the experience with the Ebola crisis, the team was aware of the communities’ needs in a serious situation like this one and was able to respond quickly. In united effort with the Local Women’s Organisation to which over 90% of all women in the community belong, the kids kitchen was able to identify 100 of the most vulnerable households. The funds usually used for the project was invested in buying food and essential goods and distributed to the poorest households in the community. Clean water is always a scarce and much need resource, yet in the face of a pandemic becomes even more important. Besides helping families with food, supplying them with drinking and cooking water is vital. Together with the funds provided by Bread and Water for Africa, the kids kitchen was able supply water to the community and reach over two thousand people.

Food provided by the community garden.

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Jul 21, 2020
Weak and sick children now strong and healthy!

By Ruby Glasspool | Operations Manager

When Uma and Jahi* first arrived at the We Are The Future school 2 years ago, they were incredibly weak and malnourished with little appetite and suffered from constant pains in their stomachs. We have been feeding them nutritious meals for the past 2 years, treated worms and prescribed vitamins. Shortly after the de-worming exercise, they started to have an appetite and to eat more. The intake of nutritious food and clean water available at the school helped with restoring their balance. They started to put on weight and grew in stature. The teachers immediately noticed the difference in their behaviour, they were more awake and more happy. These boys were incredibly lucky to receive this care, and it has been thanks to generous donations we were able to do this for them.

The children here know that every day they will get something to eat. This has had one of the biggest impacts on their emotional and mental outlook, and meant, like Uma and Jahi, they can thrive in their education.

Milestones: The school year started with 235 students, a 15% increase in registration which means we are reaching more and more children. With the purchase of much needed gardening tools and plants there has been great success in a flourishing and ever growing kitchen garden including the recruitment of 5 new volunteers for garden work. The school saved $3,100 in costs due to the food grown, and a further $2,798 was achieved from the sale of surplus crop in 2019. Some good news in otherwise difficult times and an incredible leap towards self-sufficiency.

Due to huge disruptions from COVID-19 resulting in the school closing for a period of time there was a great need for food and toiletries in the local community the school serves. Thanks to donations and brilliant planning and hard work, we were able to divert the funds and attention to distributing much needed supplies door to door throughout the last 10 weeks. As a result more than 100 households of 561 people were supported and sustained in this difficult time.

*Names were changed to protect people's privacy.

Links:

Latest news piece on WAF COVID-19 efforts

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