00:00A hot nutritious school lunch for less than 3 US cents.
00:04Sounds impossible, but in Kenya, Wawirinjiru is doing it, hundreds of thousands of times
00:10a day.
00:11Less than 3 cents per meal, that's like the cheapest meal, I think in Africa, or in the
00:18world.
00:19The cheapest meal in the world.
00:21So what's her secret?
00:2214 years back, Wawirinjiru created Food for Education, a Kenyan NGO which provides nutritious,
00:29affordable meals for schools.
00:31She started by feeding 25 kids, today she runs a massive operation.
00:36My dream then, my ambition was to feed 100 kids every single day.
00:40I was 21 years old then, so also having an ambition of feeding 100 kids felt monumentous.
00:47But now growing up, but also figuring out that you can do more, and just being obsessed
00:52with what, how much more can you do, how much more can you do, led me to here.
00:59Every day, her staff are on their feet, in the early morning hours, filling mounds of
01:04rice, beans or lentils into huge pots, and then shipping them off to schools.
01:10The NGO's biggest kitchen, the Giga Kitchen in Nairobi, serves 60,000 children every day.
01:16All in all, Wawirinjiru's team feeds 600,000 school kids around the country.
01:22When kids go to public schools, a lot of times they're coming from home sometimes that their
01:27parents don't have a lot of income, or they're struggling to sort of make ends meet, and so
01:31providing food at school is very, very critical.
01:35In Kenya, around 2.6 million children currently receive school lunches through either government
01:41or NGO programs. And the government has big goals to scale this even more.
01:47In Nairobi, Wawirinjiru's team partners with the city county, which subsidizes part of the food.
01:53Since they joined forces, Nairobi schools who benefit from this have experienced better student
01:59performance and school attendance. The school offered lunches in the past,
02:10but only a quarter of the students could afford it. There was a difference because there are some
02:15students who find accessing food very easy because their parents are available, while there are others
02:22who can't afford food and they feel as if it's unfair, as if there's something lacking in them, so it
02:27really demoralizes them and reduces their confidence.
02:31Today, that's no longer the case. Remember 3 US cents per meal? That's possible because Food
02:37for Education gets two-thirds of its funding from donors. It gets funding from government and parents
02:43pay the rest. Meals are tracked via the so-called tap-to-eat system, where each child has a wristband
02:50which registers every meal. In Nairobi, where the city subsidizes the meal, parents pay just a very small
02:57sum. So for five shillings, which is less than three cents per meal, the child is able to get a
03:03meal
03:04every single day. That's like the cheapest meal, I think in Africa, you know, or in the world, essentially.
03:12For the Food for Education team, it's all in the numbers. The tap-to-eat wristbands not only monitor
03:18the parents' payments, they also track how many meals are served. And if students don't eat the food,
03:24they can find out why. So far, this school appears to be on track, and the students seem happy with
03:31the food.
03:32They feel like it's nutritious, which it is for them. They get full. I ask them what they want us
03:39to
03:39add to the meals. They've said chicken, chips, you know, all the things that kids want. I don't think
03:45we're going to add chicken and chips, but, and also I had to tell them it's not really good to
03:50eat chicken
03:51and chips every day. Years of experience have taught Wawera to handle the wishes and demands of the
03:57schools, governments, and donors. She's also learned to keep her costs low and be efficient. Nearly all of
04:05Food for Education's ingredients are sourced from local farmers, and her team runs the kitchen like a
04:11well-oiled machine. Even today, I think, what the hell am I doing? But from 25 kids to now,
04:19I feel like there's not one challenge that we haven't overcome. The kids are still being fed.
04:25And when you go to the schools and you see, like today, where the kids are still eating,
04:30and the system is working because of the systems that we build and the amazing team that we have,
04:35then you realize that, okay, I can figure out the next challenge and the next challenge.
04:39Today, Wawera is a bit of a celebrity. Who would have thought that what started as a university
04:45project would end up on this scale? Wawera's initial goal was to feed 100 students.
04:51Now, she feeds 600,000. Her next goal, to reach one million.
