She grew up in Ruiru, Kiambu County with a burning desire to give back to society.
Food 4 Education Founder and CEO Wawira Njiru did not anticipate that her small passion project would have such a big impact on society and gain global recognition when she started it in 2012. At the time, she was only 21 years old and pursuing her undergraduate in Nutrition from Australia.
She grew up in Ruiru, Kiambu County with a burning desire to give back to society. “I also wanted to make an impact in education because my parents had been sponsored through school. They grew up poor,” Wawira reveals in an interview with Viral Tea, adding “Because of that, I thought why not do something that can help other kids get education opportunities.”
Still in Australia, she sent her parents to schools in Ruiru to inquire in what ways they needed support, with the schools revealing that their biggest challenge was that learners were so hungry in class. Furthermore, they did not have the right food for learners who kept dropping out of school out of immense hunger.
“That was when I decided to start a school feeding program. It was just a small passion project. I started with a mabati kitchen feeding about 25 children. I raised money in Australia through cooking for friends and fundraisers,” Wawira said.
Wawira raised Ksh161,250 (US$1,250) which was used to build the first Food 4 Education mabati kitchen in Ruiru in 2012. Despite not growing up rich, she understood that affording at least three meals a day meant she was well off compared to others despite the myriad of challenges her family faced.
“I grew up with a sense that if you don’t have food you can mess up your life,” she underlined to Viral Tea, describing hunger as an indignity, that it is indignifying to have a learner fidget in their seat and struggle to concentrate on the lesson, to have some slouch while clutching their stomach as if in discomfort all because of hunger.
Cooked green grams being decanted from the non-jacketed cooking vessels at Nairobi’s Green Giga kitchen in the Industrial Area. /VIRAL TEA KE.DANFLOW LINDWE
Having hungry learners with anxious expressions struggling to engage in classroom activities and finally dropping out of school is one thing, but nothing is as bad as when these learners still had nowhere to seek food.
Beneficiaries Of Food 4 Education
By 2020 Food 4 Education was feeding up to 10,000 learners per day in Kenya. Currently, up to 350,000 learners across different counties are benefitting from the program, and Wawira hopes that in five years the number of learners benefitting from the program shall have tripled to 1 million per day.
She plans to expand the program to rural areas as well by 2027 as she gears towards 1 million meals per day. “We will be growing in some urban but also rural areas. Right now we are implementing the program in the rural areas of Uasin Gishu, Nyeri and Murang’a Counties. Then the other counties it is more urban like Kiambu, Kisumu and Mombasa,” she says ambitiously.
After her first mabati kitchen in Ruiru, Wawira built a central stone kitchen in 2016. “The second central kitchen came in 2020. Today there are 21 central kitchens both in rural and urban areas,” she reveals.
The large centralized kitchens produce up to 60,000 meals per day while the smaller ones have a range of between 20,000 and 10,000 meals.
She had one employee, Mama Mercy, who cooked for the first 25 beneficiaries of the program. Today, Food 4 Education employs up to 3,200 people, 70 per cent of them being female.
Roping In Technology
In 2021 Wawira brought in steam gas technology from India to help in mass food production. The central kitchen in Ruiru was the first to get steam gas technology which made work easier for the cooks.
Until 2020, they used briquettes from recycled waste to cook after graduating from firewood. “We had seen the steam gas technology in India being used to prepare school meals. So we got the equipment from India and we had a lot to learn because this was new technology to us. Mistakes were made,” Wawira divulged.
There are now three steam gas kitchens (Green Giga kitchens), one in Ruiru, the second in Mombasa and the third was built in Nairobi’s Industrial Area in 2023. Nairobi’s Green Giga kitchen launched in August 2023 has an industrial design to meet the huge requirement of feeding school-growing children in the most hygienic way possible.
The kitchen adopts a cooking medium of steam generation through the use of briquettes that serve as fuel for two steam generators that have inbuilt economizers, as well as built-in safety systems. Additionally, the steam is not only used for cooking but also for sterilisation of kitchen equipment.
The cooking area has stainless steel vessels that are steam-heated for the cooking of rice in less than 45 minutes and also has 10 jacketed steam-heated vessels mounted on a mezzanine deck for the cooking of green grams and beans within an hour.
The preparation area is fully mechanized from the washing of leaf and root vegetables to chopping and dicing. The machines make it easy and hygienic to process the vegetables. On completion of cooking, decanting the stew is through the bottom of the vessels onto 50-litre containers that are mounted on a scissor lift before they are weighed and loaded on food trucks.
Working With County Governments
Wawira notes to Viral Tea that working with the government has propelled the school feeding program further. As a non-profit organisation, she however pointed out that F4E is limited in what it can do and where it can gain access to.
“You can’t meet the whole country, but if you walk with government and partners and if they’re receptive to the model, it means that you’re going to accelerate in part fast,” she said.
President William Ruto (then deputy) serving lunch at the Mūkarara Primary School NG-CDF Central Kitchen alongside Johnson Sakaja and John KJ Kiarie in a programme by Food 4 Education. /JOHN KIARIE
Though the school feeding program was traditionally under the national government, Wawira revealed that counties are opening up to the idea and are starting to embrace it like in Mombasa, Nairobi and Murang’a.
Wawira said in working with the government, they can design a plan where everyone contributes to ensure children get a nutritious meal a day. “So our role as we target 1 million learners over the next five years is to bring these functions of government to be able to design something that works for children,” she explains.
Her most popular government partnership is with the Nairobi City County under Governor Johnson Sakaja. In August 2023, they co-launched the Dishi Na County school feeding program aiming to address the inequities and indignities of poverty by ensuring that every child in Nairobi’s public schools receives a hot, nutritious meal each day.
Dishi Na County launched 10 kitchens among them the Green Giga kitchen in Industrial Area which prepares up to 60,000 meals per day. Nairobi’s program now feeds over 184,000 learners daily.
The Dishi Na County diet constitutes flavoured rice, green grams, beans, vegetables and fruits which ensure a balanced diet. To ensure the learners are full, Wawira revealed that the food is measured using a 550 – 650grams lunch box which is enough that some even take leftovers home to share with their siblings.
Operations Cost & Sustainability Of The Program
Wawira disclosed that all overhead costs are covered by donors. Overhead refers to the cost of technology, some cost of logistics, the internet and the things needed to run within the kitchen “But the direct costs, which are the cost of the food, the cost of paying cooks is either covered by parents or government. Or it is covered by parents where some places the government hasn’t come in,” she notes.
She also revealed that parents have to contribute to keep the program sustainable as donors sometimes get tired. “Donors can’t do it alone, they will get tired. If parents do it alone then the cost will be too high. And if the government does it alone then someday they will say there is no budget allocation for it. I think it is a strength to bring in different partners,” she said.
The learners pay to get a meal per day. The first 25 learners in 2012 never had to pay for meals till there was a need for them a few years later, but Wawira notes that the amount each learner pays is dependent on whether the school is in a rural or urban setting.
She said learners in rural schools are charged slightly higher because of the difficulties in distributing food in such areas. According to her, “Learners pay around Ksh5 to Ksh20. So in rural, they pay Ksh20, but if it is urban they pay around Ksh15 and then in Nairobi, they pay Ksh5 because of the Dishi Na County program.”
However, not all learners can afford the meal despite the subsidy by F4E. For such learners, they seek partners to help support them, which Wawira reveals is usually about 10 per cent of the population who cannot pay for the subsidized meal.
“So here in Nairobi today, we’re feeding about 25,000 children every single day who are not contributing their Ksh5. They are supported through a grant from the French government,” she said, adding that they are guided by statistics to ensure resource allocations are fair. Teachers give a daily report of how many students will be available for lunch to ensure no waste of food.
Challenges Of Starting A Project At 21
Wawira was reminiscent that her ideas would get dismissed based on her age when she started Food 4 Education, underlining that it is one challenge that young people need to overcome and keep insisting on their ideas.
“It’s very hard to try and bring out something new, to share your idea. I think overcoming that is having people who can support you. I was very lucky that I found really good mentors, people who supported me,” Wawira praised.
Her early days of rejection were evident as she would walk into some organizations but would get dismissed. Some would give her a target to attain before they could afford her a listening ear. “I said I am feeding 50 children. They told me to come back once I am feeding 1,000 children,” she recounted.
Wawira took it as a challenge and went back when she was feeding 1,000 children, a matter which left the organization shell-shocked. A notable lesson to ponder on, she believes that young people are very smart and that they ought not be dismissed based on their age, but rather get support.
Future Plans
Wawira hopes to expand her school feeding program to other countries in Africa in the next five years. “We have already started speaking to different countries that are interested in our model and they have their local ambitions,” she said.
She acknowledges that each country has its unique challenges and that Kenya’s model might not apply similarly to other African countries, but Wawira is a never-give-up individual. “We will offer them support to find school feeding programs fit for their country’s needs,” she hopes.
