Our Brighter Futures campaign, with your help, aims to provide children around the world with the opportunity, support and appropriate tools to learn and succeed in their aspired field of education. By launching our annual Fill My Cup initiative, we will shoulder the Brighter Futures’ objective and continue to provide poverty-stricken children, a sustaining and nourishing hot breakfast, every day across 15 centres in Kenya and 23 centres in Tanzania.
How often do we feel guilty as parents when our children miss a meal due to being rushed or having too many options to choose from? We hear from our elders, if a child gets an education, a family is saved! How can we educate a child who feels lethargic due to hunger and thirst?
Prior to the Fill My Cup Programme, many children would bring chai for lunch (black tea with no milk/sugar), or leave school at midday to look for food, often not returning. Teachers reported that students complained of headache, stomach ache, and cried of hunger.
Studies have shown that lack of food not only lowers a child’s concentration and cognitive learning in school, but can also impact the development of the child’s brain and stunt growth completely. Lack of food also results in malnutrition, which in turn results in a weak immune system, rendering the child more vulnerable to illnesses and water borne diseases.
