Breakfast for Kindergarten schoolgirls in Pakistan

Every morning, the tiny tots from kindergarten at SMB Fatima Jinnah Girls school walk with great confidence to the Breakfast Room where they pick up their plate and their cup of milk themselves. The latest addition to the breakfast menu has been chicken sandwiches and chicken nuggets. Other than milk, the breakfast menu has included bread with jam or butter, fresh fruits, soup or instant noodles. Fortified energy powders like Horlicks or the popular rosewater syrup (Rooh-Afza) are added to milk, to encourage children to drink it. This past quarter, breakfast was served every morning to 235 students. 

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day for children. As the first meal, it gets the body going for the rest of the day. Eating breakfast also has an impact on school performance. “Study after study shows that kids who eat breakfast function better,” Dr. Schneider says. “They do better in school, and have better concentration and more energy.” However, studies also show that a big percentage of young children skip breakfast and as they grow older, more of them completely give up breakfast.

Though these studies have been conducted in the West where most of the kids skip breakfast despite having the means to afford a breakfast, the numbers would be much worse in Pakistan's urban slums where an average family with 5 to 6 kids can not afford to provide a proper breakfast to their families. Thanks to your generous donations, the students of Kindergarten at SMB Fatima Jinnah Girls School, most of whom come from low socio-economic backgrounds, are able to start their school day with breakfast which keeps them healthy and alert and also instills nutrition at the head of the day as a lifelong habit. We are thankful to your support for making this programme a success and look forward to your support in the future.

Links:

• Zindagi Trust website