Kenyan delegation visits India to implement midday meal scheme back home

Gandhinagar: The Nairobi City County Government, Kenya, is all set to feed its disadvantaged school-going children with the learning extracted from the Indian not-for-profit organisation as Akshaya Patra Foundation, an implementation partner of the Indian Government's PM Poshan Program, has reached African shores to provide free classroom meals.

As a first step towards implementing this program, a top-level delegation from Kenya visited The Akshaya Patra Foundation’s kitchen in Ahmedabad at Gandhinagar, to understand the operations and the quality being maintained in producing over 1 lakh meals from this centralised mega-kitchen.

The delegation included officials including H.E. James Njoroge Muchiri(Nairobi City County Government Deputy Governor), Ruth Owuor (Chief Officer Education, Gender, and Social Services), and Joyce Kinyanjui (Director, Intergovernmental Relations).

Speaking about his visit, the Nairobi City County Government Deputy Governor, said, “Over 60% of the children in Nairobi County are living in the informal settlement where their parents can barely afford one nutritious meal a day leading to a rise in stunting, wasting, and malnutrition among children.

Towards this end, the national government and the Nairobi City County Government have both captured the school meal program as part of their manifesto taking cognizance of the fact that a nutritious school meal has several benefits both to the underprivileged children and their parents.

Nairobi County Government is keen to provide a hot meal for its Early Childhood Development and Education (ECDE) and Primary School going children in order to mitigate the aforementioned issues, as well as increase the enrolment, retention, transition and performance in basic education.”