Nourish your body, Nurture your brain

Emile stands before his class, energetically reading aloud one of the many books provided by World Vision (WV) to his school, Sanza Primary School. Emile is a 16-year-old student in sixth grade.

In 2015, at the age of 14, he dropped out of school. Because Emile’s home was so far from where he studied, he was unable to return home for a meal and would end up spending the whole day hungry and unable to concentrate on his studies.

This challenge made Emile leave school and pursue farming to support his parents and younger siblings. Emile wanted to ensure that his two sisters and two brothers could eat a meal each day when they returned from school.

In 2017, Emile went back to school after hearing from his community leaders and friends that lunch meals were being provided to students at Sanza through the HGSF programme. The incentive of a daily meal motivated Emile to return to school and resume his studies. Today, he is ranked fifth out of 59 students in his class. 

Eugene is a teacher at Emile’s school. Before coming to Sanza in 2017, Eugene was teaching at another school where students were not fed any meal during the day. Because of this, student concentration was very low, especially during the later hours of the day and students were frequently absent from school.

“Since I started teaching at Sanza, I have never seen a student who sleeps in class,” says Eugene excitedly. “The only students who are absent are either sick or have a family problem.”