Food 4 Education<\/a>, which has until now been feeding poor children in public schools, has opted for home supply following school closures to contain spread of coronavirus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cWe are mobilising funds\nto create a food bank that will provide six weeks of food to the school\nchildren already enrolled in Food for Education schools, as well as their families\n\u2014 a total of 30,000 people,\u201d said Wawira Njiru, who founded the agency in 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEach family will receive\na dry food basket that includes rice, beans, maize and maize flour sufficient\nto feed a family for six weeks, in the event that an ongoing lockdown disrupts\ntheir access to food staples,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The targeted families are\nthose in Kiambu County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The organisation, which\nhas in-house chefs, has until now been providing subsidised lunch to schools in\nKiambu at a cost of only Sh15 ($0.15) per pupil. The food is sourced from local\nfarmers, providing them with a ready market while tackling malnutrition\namong pupils from low income households and improving attendance in public\nschools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To date, over one million\nlow-cost meals have been provided. In 2018, Njiru was awarded the Global\nCitizen prize for Youth Leadership sponsored by American multinational Cisco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kenya has confirmed 31\ncases of Covid-19 with tens of suspected cases quarantined for tests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
President Uhuru Kenyatta\nupon confirmation of the first three cases two weeks ago ordered closure of all\nlearning institutions, sending learners home to curb a possible blow out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To boost efficiency, Food\nfor Education has embedded technology in its school feeding programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The organisation introduced Tap2Eat prepaid\nsmart wristbands worn by pupils and which they tap on a smart reader that debits the\ncost of the meal and sends a phone notification to their parents letting them\nknow their children have eaten. The whole process takes less than five seconds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Tap2Eat uses Near Field\nCommunication (NFC) technology and makes it easier for parents to make and\ntrack payments for their children\u2019s school meals (Sh15 per plate).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAlthough there is no\nannounced timeline to reopen schools in Kenya, we know the economic impact of\nCOVID-19 will be felt for months to come. When school resumes, Food for\nEducation plans to increase our meal subsidy for each of the 30,000 students\nwho receive Food for Education lunches each school day,\u201d Njiru said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To soften the blow of the\nsocioeconomic disruptions caused by coronavirus on parents, the agency looks to\ndecrease the food charges when the virus threat blows over and schools reopen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe intend to increase\nour future meal subsidy and reduce the parent contribution from $0.15 (Sh15) to\n$0.10 (Sh10) for the entire 2020 school year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This will provide relief to parents as they recover from the economic impact and ensure more children have access to nutritious meals once schools resume.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read also:<\/strong> Kenya: Four Million Women Live Below Poverty Line<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Kenyan social enterprise run by a 29-year old impact investor is moving to create a central food bank for supply of basic food items to 6,000 poor homes with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[343,438,642,919,1395],"class_list":["post-8833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-responsibility","tag-cisco","tag-coronavirus","tag-food-4-education","tag-kiambu","tag-tap2eat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}