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Philanthropod

How Wawira Njiru ensures that children don’t go to school hungry in Kenya

Season 3, Ep. 4

Wawira Njiru is transforming the lives of Kenya’s school children by providing 33,000 meals each and every day so they are not trying to learn on an empty stomach. 

 

At the age of twenty, the Kenyan born and raised woman was living in the South Australian capital of Adelaide. Today her organisation has delivered 6,000,000 meals that have led to improved nutrition, school attendance, performance and higher high school transition rates.

 

In Adelaide, Wawira was studying an undergraduate degree in nutrition, she hosted a fundraising event where she invited 80 friends to a Kenyan themed meal. 

 

The money raised from this event was the impetus for Food 4 Education, an organization that cooks, prepares and distributes nutritious meals, at subsidized prices to school children in Kenya.

 

Flash forward ten years and Wawira was named Person of the Year 2021 by the United Nations in Kenya in recognition for her commitment to providing meals for public school children in Kenya. 

 

In this episode of Philanthropod, our host Anubha Rawat chats to Wawira about the inspiration and logistics of feeding school children so that they have the nutrition they need to thrive at school. 


Find out more at Food 4 Education's website


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