It's Hard to Learn When You're Hungry!

School lunch continues to be something HATW enjoys being able to support the school with.

The great thing about the provision is that everyone gets it, we do not offer to some but not others. It is a time to be able to come together sit down and have a chat with your friends whilst all being able to have the same meal.

We would like to be able to enhance what we offer the children, currently to ensure 600 children get lunch every day, a warm porridge made up of mealie meal is made up and is quite a task. Sometimes, sugar and groundnuts are added to this. We would like to make more additions to the lunches. Locally they have fishponds and grow some vegetables, but it would be good if the local community could expand this further to ensure lunch was more varied and balanced. The fishponds are yet to be harvested; they are currently growing the fish so that they can breed from them. With some luck fish will be an addition to the lunches in the near future.

With the development of the vegetable garden at the middle site, I hope that more vegetables and relishes can also be added to school meals. The children greatly enjoy looking after the crops here and with running water readily available at the site, this really helps.

As Pizz is currently undergoing a transition to move from a private school model to become a community school, we hope the increased community involvement will support the school lunches programme and engage more people to help out as volunteers whether it is in the garden or the kitchen.

Thank you for your continued support.

I recently visited Monze in Zambia. I was last here in February 2020 and this was the last visit to the project before all the various lockdowns.

It was a pleasure to see the children again and to be able to spend some time with them. It is nice that they recognise me and can chat freely and enjoy spending some time with us.

There are some positive changes at the school that I would like to share. They have built a new kitchen at the middle school. This will allow food to be stored safely and then to be cooked under cover. They have also planted a vegetable garden and the school pupils help water and tend to this garden after school. Another new development is the fishponds - the idea is that some of the fish will be sold to generate income, and that some of the fish can be used in the school lunches.

The school lunches that are provided comprise of mealie meal – a porridge like consistency and this is supplemented with groundnuts, sugar and salt. This is a lifeline to many of the children with the cost of food rising, it is important that we continue this provision. We hope they will be able to offer more variety to the children through the fish farming project as well as the vegetable gardens.

Celebrating 25 years of HATW in 2020, investment was made at all the projects to plant 25 trees. Pizz school planted a mix of fruit trees around the perimeter of the bigger school. In the coming years, we hope that these will bear fruit, which the children will enjoy in years to come.

The observation that pleased me the most on my visit was looking at the children. They have all grown and look healthy and happy. The children enjoy lunchtime – it’s a sociable and nice thing to do - to sit down with friends and have something to eat. The noise and the fun that goes on at lunchtime is good to see. They all queue up in a very orderly fashion and then sit down, eat and chatter away.

Thank you for supporting this initiative and making a positive difference to the lives of these children.