We all know just how vital food is for our survival, it’s something we learn instinctively at a very young age – our stomachs ache and begin to grumble and we realise how empty our stomachs feel, we may start to feel tired or get a headache, and our mood suddenly takes a nose-dive into the gloominess where our cognition declines and we struggle to concentrate and become irritable.
But what about continuous food deprivation? The obvious effects are severe weight loss, fatigue, and muscle weakness. In children, malnutrition will also lead to impaired physical and mental development that will often be irreversible, including stunting of growth.
Unfortunately, these effects of malnutrition and malnourishment are too common. And for the students, the cognitive effects impedes their learning at school. That’s why we needed to raise funds to feed our students.
In Zeze, most people are subsistence farmers living off the limited crops they can grow in the rainy season – and the school cannot give any food to the students, meaning the students often go hungry.
On 15th November we started a month-long campaign to raise $600 for seed money to plant a school garden. We wanted to plant fruit trees, such as avocado and mango, and vegetables, such as spinach and carrots, as well as cassava and maize that can be used to make porridge. These will be able to create a simple but nutritious meal for our students – a meal that will help their health and their studies.
A couple of days before the final day of our campaign we reached our goal of $600 with the aid of our very generous donors! This will allow us to create approximately a 1500 square foot garden that can feed around 450 students!
This is a very exciting gift for our students for the holidays! And again, we wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone who donated to make this project possible for our students. They will be very excited to plant their seeds in their school garden, and we cannot wait to share the progress of this project with you in the New Year, so make sure you’re following us to see our updates!
Asante sana!
