HGC Feeding Program Impact Evaluation Report: Improved Performance, Increased Class Attendance, and enhanced Health on the Orphans
By George Ongere
Introduction
Starting 2019, Humanist Global Charity initiated a feeding program of 30 children at the Humanist Orphans Center in Kenya. The orphans fed on healthy meals and continued going to school for the whole year. The rationale of this program was that many orphans would be motivated to attend classes, improve their performance in class, and acquire good health.
In Africa, due to poverty, many children drop out of school because they go to school on empty stomach. Studying while hungry is one of the factors that make most primary school pupils to lack concentration in the classroom and lead to drop outs; mostly on the girl child. First, a grumbling stomach needing food to digest distracts these pupils and takes away their ability to follow lessons. Second, the stigma associated with poverty in the village school is hurting. Children laugh at pupils who keep having grumbling stomach because of hunger and poverty. Most children who do not have the privilege of having lunch in school always survive on wild fruits growing in the bushes. In the village where we have our project, the common wild fruit pupils depend on to survive during lunch hour is the quaver fruit, which only has one season. The problem with quaver is that it causes stomach upset that lead to grumbling stomach problems. As such, we conducted a need assessment on the village schools on how we could help these suffering pupils. After identifying the solution, we reached out to Hank Pellissier, the director of Humanist Global Charity, and the organization agreed to sponsor the feeding program of 30 children for one year and afterwards, launch projects that could sustain this initiative for many years. We thank the dedication of all the donors who supported HGC on this program.
How the Feeding Program is Organized
In Kenyan villages, the most valued staple food is Ugali (Maize flour bread) served with variety of soups. In the program, we served children with balanced diet meals. We had a very good timetable to follow that served Sardines, meat, fish, vegetables, and mixed boiled maize and beans. The feeding program was carried out at the Humanist Orphans Center. Inside the center, there is a library. The strategy was that even as the orphans had their meals, they were close to books. They came, ate, and had some good readings of the books. After their meals, they reported to school. In the rural village schools, there are no lunch programs in the schools. Therefore, the children are released at 1 PM to go home and eat lunch. They are expected back at 2 PM to start afternoon classes.
Method used to Evaluate the Feeding Program
Before the start of the feeding program, we collected the performance of the students, their attendance in class, and weight. Our aim was to find out if the feeding program could improve these variables. We took their class performance in the year 2018 and monitored their performances throughout the feeding program in 2019 (See Table 1 and 2).
The Results of the Program
When we took the initial performances in 2018, we only had few students who were exceptionally bright that would get grade A. Many students scored averagely while some scored poorly. A semester in Kenya in the primary school goes for three months. Below is the data we took before the feeding program in 2018 (Table 1) and during the feeding program (Table 2). As indicated in table 1, many students missed a significant number of classes since there was no motivation for them since they did not get enough meals. When it comes to weight, according to the required standard, a healthy boy and a girl at the age of 8 years, who feed healthy meals, should average weigh of about 25.8 Kg while those with the age of 15 should weigh 52 to 56.8 kg. If you look the weight we took in 2018 as shown in the table, almost all the children had a weight below the standard healthy weight at their ages ( For healthy weight chart for different ages, see https://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/childrens_bmi/about_childrens_bmi.html and https://www.disabled-world.com/calculators-charts/height-weight-teens.php).
Orphans
(PS: In 2020, due to COVID 19, the schools were closed in March even before the first semester ended and thus we could not compile the performance for 2020).
As shown in the table above, the food program had an impact in the academic performance of almost all of the students, their class attendance, and health. As demonstrated in the data, before the feeding program started, most of the children missed classes and had poor performance. Moreover, as indicated by their weight, a significant number were not healthy to the normal standards recommended at their age. Nevertheless, after the feeding program, many children did not miss classes and those who missed were due to unavoidable situation like sickness and emergencies, amongst others. The students also improved in their performance as indicated by the grades shown. Moreover, almost every child had a significant weight increase.
Discussion of the Outcome of the Program
Many children in rural Kenya go to school hungry and this discourages them from going to school regularly, which affects their performance. One of the contributing factors as to why children go hungry in the rural of Kenya is due to prolonged droughts and poverty. According to the United Nations, when children go to school hungry, they do not concentrate in Class and this affects their performance.
The feeding program we launched, supported by Humanist Global Charity, demonstrated that when children are given healthy meals, they improve in performance, class attendance, and they add weight to the recommended healthy standard. From our findings, when pupils get healthy food, it increases their morale of attending classes. Before the feeding program, many children missed classes to hunt for food and only went back to school after they were sure they had something to eat back at home, even if it was small. Many of these children miss school to go and weed sugarcane farms to get small money they can use to buy lunch and this makes them to perform poorly in class. As such, there is a rising child labor in this village. When the situation become tough, many of these children abandon schools and migrate to town to be street children or enter into prostitution to survive. Humanist Orphans Center is trying to help these children get good education to realize a greater future.
Towards this, we would like to thank Humanist Global Charity for their dedication towards this program. To ensure that the program continued, HGC went ahead and funded some income generating activities that will see this program running for many years. Currently, we have the Popsicle ice business, Orchard Farm with irrigation system, Electric grinding business, and Sisal fiber extraction business.
Recommendation
Currently, the program is running, including distributing food materials to the orphans to ensure they eat healthy meals even at home. HGC has strived to make Humanist Orphans center self-sustaining by opening many income generating ventures.
Towards this direction, we recommend that some of the business like Popsicle machine business and Poshomill grinding business that HGC launched should be boosted by adding additional small capital to make them maximize profit and avoid unwanted losses. For example, with the electricity blackouts in the village that can take days before they are restored, the ice we make always melt due to lack of power to run the freezer leading to losses. This means we need to invest in a power generator to help run the freezer when this happens. Moreover, we need to add more cooler boxes to help in hawking the ice to various schools and offices. To add on, we need to add selling of grains at the Electric grinding machine business to help maximize profits.