Chef Jamie Oliver’s ‘School Dinners Campaign’ in the UK has been instrumental in changing attitudes and behavior, as well as the quality and nutritional value of the meals. We are a long way from this in Kenya, just ensuring that there is food in schools is still the baseline. Kenya need’s its own Jamie Oliver!
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At Olng’arua School we didn’t need any persuading about the importance of food in a child’s education. Having run a school for more than 15 years, the evidence that food is essential to a child’s ability to learn is obvious. It is also clear that children who get good, nutritious food on a daily basis do better in every metric than those that don’t.
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That is the reason why, in 2016, we invested in a much larger school kitchen. We employed well trained cooks and established our own vegetable garden providing fresh vegetables, fruit and herbs for the kitchen. With this we were able to up our culinary game. Our school meals became much more varied, our ingredients were fresh and well-crafted menus provided balanced nutrition for children who often had very little to eat at home.
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The kitchen was also designed with practical teaching in mind. Here we were able to teach our kids about the importance of good food, and how to prepare healthy meals for themselves and their families.
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The kitchen was destroyed in the violence of 2023. As we began rebuilding the classrooms were our most urgent requirement, but we know first-hand what a difference good food can make to these children’s education so we will be rebuilding our kitchen.
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Once we do we will again be able to provide more than just food. We will be able to give our kids meals that help them go further in life, and we will be able to teach them how to make meals that do that for themselves and their families, long after they have left our school and gone out into the world.
