Taking A STEP FORWARD

With 44% of families in Turkana, Kenya, suffering malnutrition Mary’s Meals are doing their utmost to rise to the challenge

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ONE of the saddest aspects of my trip to Turkana with Mary’s Meals was seeing older children often go hungry while their younger siblings ate. When I visited the drought afflicted region of north-west Kenya in September, the charity only had permission to feed in the Early Childhood Development Centres ECDs) the equivalent of UK nurseries. In towns and villages where the ECDs sit alongside primary schools, it was common to see wistful faces peeking from doorways as the infants tucked into their plates of maize and beans.

The link between food and education, seen as necessary to break the cycle of poverty, is at the heart of the Mary’s Meals ethos. Yet the lack of a consistent feeding programme in primary schools meant some of those children chanting their numbers in classrooms or under a tree would leave formal education a few years later.

But just weeks after I returned the charity was able to expand its activities. Since mid-October, it has been feeding 60,000 children in 170 Turkana primary schools.

This is an increase of almost 50% and brings the total of children receiving Mary's Meals in Turkana to around 180,000.