From starting a modest fundraiser for 25 school children, Wawira Njiru, 35, has become a social entrepreneur with a staggering 6,000 staff on her payroll, feeding 600,000 kids in Kenya every day with her organization Food4Education (F4E), an engagement for which she is being honored with this year's German Africa Prize. How did this transformation come to pass?
The answer may be in her character. Stubborn and hardworking, that's how Njiru sees herself. "It's hard to tell me something is not possible."
Thinking back to how she began, she explained, "My dream then, my ambition was to feed 100 kids every day. I was 21 years old then, so also having an ambition of feeding 100 kids felt momentous. But now growing up, but also figuring out that you can do more, and just being obsessed with 'How much more can you do? How much more can you do?' led me here."
Njiru left her native Kenya after finishing school to study nutrition science in Adelaide, Australia.
Connecting the dots
"I knew a lot of kids back home were not getting the education they needed. At that time, I was learning about the impact of food, and I didn't realize how powerful food was," Njiru said.
"When you're doing a nutrition degree, that's when you really learn about the science behind food. And knowing that, especially for kids, it's so critical that they get nutritious meals."
When she found out her friends at the university often had a few dollars to spare and were looking for ways to contribute, she connected the dots and started her first fundraiser.
From there, the trajectory was set. But the road was rough at times for the young woman she was, Wawira explained. Some people didn't take her seriously. Others did.
"You have to find your believers," Njiru found out. "You can't just go with your own name. You have to find someone to vouch for you or someone or something to validate your presence."
Her degree certainly helped. But still, many men looking for jobs just didn't seem confident in working for a young woman. This is why more than 70% of her employees today are women, Njiru said.
School meals at 3 cents, digitally tracked
Steadily pushing the limits, Food4Education now provides 19,000 schools across Kenya with more than 600,000 meals every day. The system relies on a mix of funding: through donations and government funding, parents are left with a small contribution, which in some cases amounts to 5 Kenyan shillings (3 US cents).
Payment is processed through the so-called "Tap-to-Eat" system. Every child has a wristband that is used to track each meal. The wristbands not only track parents' payments, but they also help document how many meals are actually served. And if children don't pick up their meals, the team can find out why.
The model also relies on local sources wherever possible. About 80% of the food the organization distributes comes from small-scale farmers. This way, school meals are freshly sourced — and farmers have a reliable market for selling their produce.
"For a long time, school meals were viewed as charity. We've proven that it's economic infrastructure," Njiru said.
Boosting attention and morale among school children
Does it pay out? It seems so. Data show that children at participating schools miss fewer classes, and they also perform better at school.
"Food is everything," said Raphaera Kanya, director of a primary school in Kenya's capital Nairobi. "When your stomach has nothing, you cannot understand anything in class."
To Jane Nyambura, a pupil, the school feeding fosters equality at school.
"There was a difference because there are some students who are finding accessing food very easy because their parents are available," she told DW.
"There are others who can't afford food, and they feel as if it's unfair, as if there's something lacking in them. So it really demoralizes them and reduces their confidence."
Njiru has already set her sights on the next benchmark: Reaching 1 million schoolchildren every day. She has every right, it seems, to be confident.
"From 25 kids to now, I feel like there's not one challenge that we haven't overcome."
The Prize is awarded by the German Africa Foundation (DAS), a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to promoting a nuanced view of Africa in political circles and among the German public.
Since 1993, it has awarded the German Africa Prize to individuals from African countries whose ideas and work inspire solutions to global issues of the future beyond their countries of origin. The award has gone to outstanding individuals in Zimbabwe, Cameroon and Sierra Leone in recent years.
