Beneficiaries of the Lunch for Children school meal program (COURTESY)

Three years ago, Isabelle Brivian watched other children rush to school as she stayed at home taking care of her brothers. Now, because of the regular meals provided at the school by a Chinese school feeding program, parents are motivated to enroll and keep their children in school. The young girl can finally join the cohort of pupils in Mathare, a slum neighborhood in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.

The program, named Lunch for Children, was jointly started by Deng Fei, a Chinese philanthropist, the Chinese Red Cross, and the Social Welfare Foundation of China in March 2017. The program covered 1,103 pupils from five primary schools in Mathare on a daily basis in its initial days. Since then, it has evolved to include over 6,000 students from 23 schools in Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nigeria, Malawi and Uganda.

Teachers agree that food delivery reduces absenteeism. The participating students’ academic performance is improving, and their dropout rates are decreasing. The program’s benefits also extend to low-income homes, since parents have less stress to cope with when it comes to their children’s nutrition. In fact, Brivian no longer asks for food when she returns home from school.

Poor nutrition is a serious issue on the African continent. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) said in its annual report, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021, that more than a third of the world’s 768 million undernourished people, or 282 million, reside in Africa. This accounts for 21 percent of the African population, more than twice the undernourished group of any other region.

On the eve of the UN Food Systems Summit in September 2021, the African Union Development Agency facilitated an African Common Position. The five recommended paths to promote fair and affordable access to food prioritize nutrition and school feeding. The task is daunting for the Chinese program in this aspect, as its coverage has been expanding.

Chinese volunteers conduct a Lunch for Children program survey in 2019 (COURTESY)

An effective device

Since its inception in 2011, the Free Lunch for Children program initiated by Deng has been implemented in 1,555 schools across China, raising 833 million yuan ($131.3 million) to assist over 380,000 children by September 2021. It also partially contributed to the establishment of a national nutrition improvement program for rural students in October 2011. The government has since invested around 16 billion yuan ($2.5 billion) in it every year.

“Public welfare knows no borders,” Deng said. His program has been expanded to Africa based on this principle. Yin Binbin was entrusted with the project’s implementation. The young Chinese volunteer co-founded the Dream Building Service Association, an NGO created in Kenya in 2014, focusing on youth education, undernourishment reduction among children, and poverty relief. Through his organization’s efforts, three schools in Mathare were restored between 2014 and 2018.

Funds for the school feeding program come from individual donors as well as Chinese organizations and foundations. The initiators have also registered a foundation in the United States for overseas fundraising operations. All of the participating schools, have set up profiles on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to publish information on a regular basis. Furthermore, teachers and students share meals together, a measure taken to ensure cohesiveness and quality.

Local farmers are contracted to provide rice, beans, wheat, dairy products and other ingredients for the school meals. This helps combat hunger while also allowing the farmers involved to have a stable source of income. Parents are also encouraged to participate in monitoring and assessment, as well as the purchase of some required products, in order to ensure the project’s long-term viability.

New challenges

According to FAO research, food insecurity and malnutrition have worsened due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing containment measures. In 2020, about 46 million more individuals in Africa were impacted by hunger than in the previous year.

With many schools closed as a result of lockdown, program teams chose to keep serving meals to pupils. Typically, participating children are required to gather and eat their meals on-site. Nevertheless, adjustments were made after school closures caused by COVID-19. Between July and November 2020, a total of 5,361 food packages, each weighing 7 kg, were provided to eight Mathare schools. The program resumed to provide meals on-site in the area in October 2020, with the reopening of schools. Despite the uncertainty of the pandemic, plans have been formulated to ensure the normal operation of the program.

If conditions permit, the program is likely to provide meals in 50 schools by 2022, with an estimated annual expenditure of 5 million yuan ($786,500), which could reach 10 million yuan by 2023, covering 100 schools. Yet the funding shortage is a severe challenge.

According to the program’s observer Shi Zhihong, a scholar at the Center for Sudanese Studies of Yangzhou University, the project relies too much on donations from foundations and NGOs, which account for 75 percent of the 5.64 million yuan ($888,900) raised in China, as of November 2020, while the public, especially corporate donations are limited. However, due to the pandemic, donations from foundations have decreased significantly, and the rest of the funding can only provide meals to 3,640 students and teachers from 10 school in Mathare, about 1 million yuan ($157,600).

Therefore, Shi called for more active participation of Chinese chambers of business and enterprises, as well as philanthropic groups. Chinese students and employees from Confucius Institutes in Africa are also invited to join the volunteer team.

Li Anshan, professor emeritus at Peking University and President of the Chinese Society of African Historical Studies, agrees that the program is a good opportunity for Chinese living in Africa to support the local community.

The Chinese program began somewhat late and is currently on a tiny scale in comparison to school feeding programs undertaken by international organizations such as the UN. However, it has the benefit of having built a stable, efficient and sustainable operational model, according to Shi, who believes that the project will reach its full potential in the near future.

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