THURSDAY, 3 March was International School Meals Day.
Around the world, thousands of needy school children received an extra meal that day in an effort to alleviate hunger and malnutrition.
The FutureLife Foundation Trust celebrated International School Meals Day with a visit to Edamini Primary School in Shongweni Dam to spoil around 1 000 learners with a nutritious FutureLife breakfast.
Older Edamini pupils quickly volunteered to arrange the little ones into queues, helped mixing breakfast, filling bowls and feeding their young co-learners. At the end, the whole feed was over in only 40 minutes.
Many KZN schools are approaching the private sector for support for their learners, especially food and uniforms.
Most of KZN quintile 1-3 non-fee schools are serving a cooked meal to their learners.
Many of them are facing the problem that learners arrive hungry at school in the morning and the cooked meal has to be served around 10am.
A supplementary breakfast at these schools would enable the children to enjoy the cooked lunch around noon and leave school with a full tummy.
Julika Falconer, CEO of the FutureLife Foundation, said, “We feed 150 000 free FutureLife meals every month to vulnerable children at their ECD centres and schools.
“The need is overwhelming and we are on a mission to attract more funding towards school feeding.
“The benefits are immense: better school attendance, better energy and concentration levels, healthier and more balanced learners who get the opportunity to achieve their best.
“School feeding programmes also benefit the communities at large as they take huge pressure off ‘food-insecure’ households.”
