EVERY CHILD DESERVES A NUTRITIOUS MEAL One of the most important components of the Missions intervention is providing schools for the children in the local communities where we work. However, most of the children have to walk miles to school and come to school without having breakfast, no lunch to eat in school and most of them go home on an empty stomach to wait for the only meal late in the evening with the whole family around the bowl.
This little girl had no lunch during the lunch time and had to wait until her mother came with the little money she could get from her petty trading to buy lunch for her and she even got to the school after the lunch break. The only food they get in the locality for lunch is from a lady that lives in the neighbourhood that sells boiled cassava and gravy and only the privileged few can afford to buy and even that is not appropriate for lunch for children of their age. We then started a feeding program in the school by providing one meal a day for the children because we found out that there is a connection between nutrition and learning and that an empty bag cannot stand.
They are given sumptuous meals, biscuits, sweets and a drink for lunch. This is luxury for most of them and some of them sometimes have to take part of their food home to share with their siblings especially the biscuits, sweets and lollipops. It has increasing clear that school feeding program is essential in the global fight against poverty and illiteracy. The assurance of one delicious meal a day is an incentive to the parents to send their children especially the girls to school.
Our top priority now is to extend the program to the other schools. The only challenge we have is the funds. YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!!! Excerpt from UNICEF Sierra Leone Country Representative report
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