IDAK has been supporting Wasare primary and junior secondary school for a year now, running a pilot feeding programme for all the students. We’ve reported on the success of this in previous blogs, including how it enables Kindergarten pupils to attend school for a whole day, and also how it enables the older children to stay in school and receive extra tuition support, particularly in the lead up to their exams.
During the exams, an additional aspect to the programme was trialled with great success, and that was the inclusion of meat in the meals for the exam candidates. In Kenya, there are extremely important exams for the pupils of top primary and the pupils of top junior secondary, and the performance of the pupil in these exams will impact where they end up going for junior secondary or senior secondary respectively.
So, to boost the feeling of self-worth and feel-good factor for the students, which then impacted their morale going into the exams, the pupils taking exams all received meat and chapatti as part of their meal for the exam week. For children living in a community where meat is almost never eaten due to cost, to be given meat during exam week is a really big deal, and the students really appreciated it.
Mr Paul, headteacher of Wasare school said “We are very grateful to IDAK for coming in to help our candidates especially at this crucial time of their academic turning point. The special diet during the National Assessments have been exceptionally well embraced by not only the students and the school’s board but rather the entire community. May the Lord bless and keep providing for IDAK “.
After the students had finished their exams, they celebrated by planting trees together. This was done as part of the 1,000,000 trees project in Kenya, but also as a way for the students to remain connnected to the school. Each of the students was tasked with taking care of their tree, including during holiday periods, to ensure the growth of the tree, and have a practical reminder not just of their time at the school, but also the importance of caring for creation. And as an extra incentive, the students of the best growing ten trees will be given a special award!
These initiatives have been done as a pilot for the overall feeding programme model used by IDAK, and as more feeding programmes are started, the learning points from these initiatives will be fed into the model going forward.
