UN office to fete woman feeding over 30,000 pupils

Founder and Executive Director of Food4Education Wawira Njiru. The UNON will today honour her as UN Person of the Year 2021, for providing free meals to public school children.

Photo credit: Pool | Nation Media Group

What you need to know:

  •  Wawira Njiru, the founder and executive director of Food4Education, will today receive an accolade as the UN Person of the Year, for her work in providing meals to public school children in Kenya.
  •  Her organisation cooks, prepares and daily distributes nutritious meals at subsidised prices to over 33,000 public school children in Kenya.

The United Nations Office at Nairobi (UNON) will today honour Wawira Njiru, the founder and executive director of Food4Education, as the UN Person of the Year 2021.

Ms Njiru will receive the accolade for her work in providing meals to more than 33,000 public school children in Kenya from humble backgrounds at subsidised prices.

The virtual event will be presided over by UNON Director-General Zainab Hawa Bangura.

Ms Njiru will be the 20th recipient of the award, joining a list of past winners who include First Lady Margaret Kenyatta in 2014, for her efforts to stop preventable maternal and new-born deaths in the country.

The award was introduced in 2002 to honour individuals or institutions that succeed in bringing to public notice significant issues related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which serve as an inspiration to all Kenyans. So far, 19 Kenyans have been recognised.

University students 

Last year, the award went to a team of 15 Kenyatta University students who developed the first mechanical ventilator using locally available materials.

“This year, the UN in Kenya is proud to recognise and present Ms Wawira Njiru for her work with Food4Education, an organisation that cooks, prepares and daily distributes nutritious meals at subsidised prices to over 33,000 public school children in Kenya,” reads part of the statement from UNON.

The Food4Education program was conceived in 2011 when Ms Njiru realised that lack of food and nutrition made classroom learning difficult, especially for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, creating an unequal education system.

This realisation led the Bachelor of Nutrition Science graduate to come up with the program to address the gap and improve the learning outcomes of affected children.

In 2012, the organisation managed to provide food to 25 learners in Nairobi, ensuring they did not attend school on an empty stomach.

Public schools

The program has since grown in leaps and bounds and now feeds at least 30,000 children daily.

The meals are provided to schools in informal settlements in Nairobi and Mombasa, and served at a subsidised price of Sh15 for families that can afford the fee, and at no cost to the most vulnerable ones.

A typical meal consists of rice, beans, vegetables, chapati with lentils, maize and fresh fruit.

The 30-year-old’s ultimate goal is to ensure all public schools in the country provide nutritious meals for their learners.

In Kenya, more than 36.7 per cent of the population lives on less than a dollar a day, with more than 23 million children going to school hungry every day.

More than 29 per cent of children in rural areas and 20 per cent in urban areas, especially the informal settlements, suffer from malnutrition.