What we Do
- Relieve hunger by building a sustainable school meals programme
- Reduce poverty by training in effective farming, livestock and business methods
- Promote self-esteem and independence
Feeding Futures (FF) was founded by Vanessa Bennett and Peterson Githinji based in Kenya.
Feeding Futures has developed a unique model for self-sustaining school meals. We install a water-harvesting system, kitchen and grain storage, then feed the children for the first two years. Employing agriculture specialists to work with parents to start a school farm and increase crop yields, enables parents to take over the provision of meals at school and no longer need external support.
A short history of Feeding Futures
Feeding Futures began when Vanessa Bennett from the UK and Peterson Githinji, a Head Teacher of a Primary School met and became friends. The children at Peterson’s school near Molo in Nakuru County were struggling to stay awake for classes as their parents were unable to send them to school with a full belly and a full lunch bag. Some even fainted at school due to hunger. Peterson and Vanessa committed together to help these children and Feeding Futures was born.
Initially, the focus was simply on feeding children but after two years we introduced agricultural training to parents in order to help them reach the point of being able to provide for their own children. Community engagement was challenging at this point, but many parents did take the opportunity.
Many benefits to the children were reported. Enrolment, attendance and retention all increased significantly. The school, St Brendan’s Primary School in Molo, received an award for the most improved exam scores in the area, and the feeding programme was the talk of the district. Transition rates to secondary school improved and for the first time, former pupils started to be accepted into university.
Feeding Futures then partnered with Mukinyai Primary School, providing a nutritious breakfast and lunch every school day. This time, it was agreed in advance with the Head Teacher, Board of Management and Assistant Chief that Feeding Futures was not coming as a donor but as a partner. The partnership involves Feeding Futures building infrastructure and starting the meals programme and parents would gradually take over responsibility for meals provision over a period of five years.
Commitment to the work was needed by parents and the wider community. It was made clear that the partnership would end after five years so parents would need to work hard to take over the meals provision within that time.
Feeding Futures provides agriculture training and mentoring to the community in addition to fencing, inputs and guidance for a school shamba. The school provides the labour for the shamba. This, along with increased yield and income parents achieve from improved agriculture and business basics enables them to take over the food programme.
Many of the children would have had no lunch at all and for some, it is their only cooked meal of the day. The impact of the meals, supported by effective water harvesting has been huge. The community has come together and now provides the school meals independently from Feeding Futures.
Feeding Futures is now working with its third school community – Sidai Primary School, Subukia. Progress is encouraging and parents are already providing the school with breakfast for their children.
By combining meals for children at school with community training in sustainable agriculture, Feeding Futures works to improve the long-term prospects of disadvantaged, rural communities.
Mission Statement
United for Sustainable Change
- Partnering with rural communities
- Increasing school attendance
- Improving the perceived value of education
- Improving children’s health
- Improving learning and exam results
Feeding Futures is currently providing meals to around 330 children at Sidai Primary School and farm training to around 140 households. The plan is to use the ‘Partnership for Sustainability’ model with more schools in the region over the next five years but also to offer the model to others who can learn from the Feeding Futures team..
The gift of water
D. Hunja – Previous member of MPS Board of management, “Since 1976, Mukinyai Primary school has never had a single drop of water. Feeding Futures was sent here by God to prepare us for the pandemic we are experiencing right now. Pupils used to fetch water at the river Mau and you can imagine if we didn’t have water, pupils would be coming with their own water for hand-washing purposes. Now we have enough water not only to cook but for also for hand-washing.”
D. Hunja – Former Board of School Management
The benefit of school meals
The head teacher Mary Njoroge said “Needy pupils can now access at least two meals a day with one of the meals being at school since their parents cannot afford to provide breakfast or lunch at home which has been provided at school for the last 2 years”. Now ongoing.
“Cases of absenteeism have gradually reduced and the health of the children has improved since they receive a balanced diet which has been guaranteed and also an improved school discipline since in the past there were many cases of theft of money at home by the pupils so that they can buy food during lunch hour and there has been no need by the same pupils to steal money from their parents now that they have no food to buy. The moral values have also improved such as responsible children who wash their plates and cups and patience in that they queue well during meals time and in case there is a class of pupils who have been caught up in a class activity and got late for their meals actually find that the other pupils did not get double portions and left them without a meal”
Mary Njorge, Head Teacher
SUSTAINABLE SCHOOL MEALS
- Motivate school attendance
- Provide energy and concentration to learn
- Improve health and resilience
- Improve learning and exam results
COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP
Learning and working together produces greater productivity and motivation. The children and parents benefit as they share new skills.
AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT
Delivering farm training empowers individuals to be independent and also helps communities work together and support each other.
Meet Our Team
Vanessa Bennett – Founder and Chair of Trustees
Vanessa is married to Paul and has three adult children. Vanessa studied for a degree in Medical Instrumentation before working in the NHS for eight years. She then worked for a medical equipment consultancy who were helping Ministries of Health in Sub-Saharan Africa form appropriate medical equipment policies for their countries.
Vanessa has volunteered in various roles over the years including as a basic telephone crisis counsellor, face-to-face crisis pregnancy counsellor and as a trained Citizens Advice Advisor. She also worked for Christians Against Poverty as a Debt Coach under now fellow-Trustee Colin Clark.
Vanessa and her husband Paul became Directors of a Christian Counselling Training organisation through which they met and became friends with Peterson Githinji – the Head Teacher of a rural Kenyan school – in 2007. Through the organisation, Vanessa visited Kenya in 2009 and with Peterson, planned to start a feeding programme for the hungry children in his school. Feeding Futures was born in 2010.
Peterson Githinji – Executive Chair of Lisha Jamii
Peterson Githinji is married to Jemima and live in Nakuru.
Peterson is a career teacher and a seasoned counsellor. He holds a diploma in Special Needs Education (SNE) from Kenya Institute of Special Education and a Diploma in Education Management from Kenya Institute of Management (KEMI). He has taught in many schools rising to head teacher, a position he has used to connect St Brendan’s School in Kenya to The March School in Chichester through British Counsel classroom connection. He is respected as a teacher leader which put him into the position of Chairman of head teachers association KEPSHA for many years, a facilitator in peace and reconciliation work, burnout and innovative leadership during educational seminars.
He was developed as a Christian Counsellor by Barnabas Training Consortium( BTC), achieving Diploma, appointed and trained as trainer. He is trained up to Intermediate Diploma in Counsellor Supervision by Counselling and Psychotherapy Central Awarding Body(CPCAB- UK ).
As a member of Association of Christian Counsellors (ACC) in UK, he spearheaded registration of ACC in Kenya which helped in the establishment of professional Christian Counsellors in Eastern Africa. After actively leading counsellors in reconciliation after tribal clashes and regularly documenting counselling activities in the Accord magaine of ACC, he received an award of hand of fellowship of ACC in UK representing Africa.
He holds Bachelor of Art in Counselling Psychology from Mount Kenya University and Masters of Art in Counselling Psychology from Mount Kenya University. He is a researcher and has published his study in Effectiveness of guidance and counselling in schools and also in relationship between job demand and work burnout among teachers.
Peterson met Vanessa and her husband Paul during an ACC conference where they all worked same organisation and became friends. He invited Vanessa to Kenya in 2009 and during the visit they decided to start feeding very needy children who were fainting from hunger in a rural school, St Brendan’s Primary school, where he was the head teacher.
Peterson and Vanessa’s desire to resolve food deficiency in pupils led to the foundation of Feeding Futures Charity in 2010 and became a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) in 2017.
Colin Clark – Trustee and Treasurer
Colin is married to Jenni with 3 wonderful children and 7 delightful grandchildren.
He started work as an agricultural research assistant before training to be a registered general and mental health nurse in the East End of London. After qualifying as a District Nurse, Colin moved into management and qualified as a teacher. He also gained an MSc in Behavioural Biology & Healthcare from Surrey University. Colin became Chief Nurse and Director of Professional Standards of an NHS Trust Board and Strategic Health Authority, during which time he had management responsibility for improving standards in health care.
Later working as an independent consultant, Colin’s company gained accreditation with Middlesex University to run a programme (Managing Complaints) in NHS Trusts across the UK.
Before volunteering with Feeding Futures, Colin worked for seven years as a trained debt coach with Christians Against Poverty (CAP) in partnership with a local church, during which time he helped 107 households to become debt free.
Michael Askwith – Trustee
Michael Askwith has long Kenya connections, He was brought up in Kenya, where his father worked in the Kenya Government from 1936 to 1960, initially as a District Officer and District Commissioner and latterly as Commissioner for Community Development and Rehabilitation. His maternal grandfather went out to Kenya in the early 1920s as a civil engineer attached to the Public Works Department, responsible for building roads in many parts of the country. He still has family connections in Kenya.
Michael went to Westlands Primary School in Nairobi and Pembroke House in Gilgil before secondary school and university in the UK.
After graduating in Economics and Politics from Cambridge University, he joined the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 1968 as a Junior Professional Officer, serving in Algeria and then in Chad. After further studies in theology and mission in the UK he then rejoined UNDP and served in eight country assignments (Haiti, Guyana, Congo (Brazzaville), Mauritania, Congo (Brazzaville) again, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea and Equatorial Guinea, in addition to three assignments in UNDP Headquarters in New York. He served as the UNDP/UN head of mission in Congo (Brazzaville), Equatorial Guinea and Eritrea.
On retirement from UNDP in 1998, he was seconded by Tearfund as Executive Director of the United Mission to Nepal, a consortium of 35 Christian mission agencies from 18 countries, although returned to the UK for family reasons at the end of 1999. Thereafter, he carried out consultancy missions in about forty countries in Africa, South East Asia, the Pacific, former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe relating to strategic planning and evaluation, mainly with the UN system UNDP, UNESCO, UN Volunteers (UNV) but also with VSO/BESO and Tearfund.
In the UK, Michael has served as a Trustee of the Salmon Youth Centre, Bermondsey, London since 2007, focussing on strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation. Since 2003 he has been the chairman of Pembrokians (UK), an association of former pupils of Pembroke House in the UK.
He is married to Celia and has four children and eight grand-children, and is a member of Chichester Baptist Church.
He looks forward to sharing his prior experience with Feeding Futures as a Trustee and to continuing his associations with Kenya
Gemima Kema – Trustee in Kenya
Andrew Njenga – Trustee ion Lisha Jamii
Andrew is a trustee of Lisha Jamii, the Kenyan based charity.
Nderitun Yaga – Development Support and Livestock Officer with Lisha Jamii
Dr. Samuel Nderitu Nyaga or Sam as he is fondly referred to in our team is a Kenyan veterinarian. He works with Lisha Jamii as the Development Support and Livestock Officer training the farmers on proper management of livestock for productive outputs.
He qualified as a veterinarian in 2014 from the University of Nairobi. Since then, Sam has been and continues to work with rural communities in his large animal private practice. He is extremely passionate about rural community empowerment through agribusiness ventures support and partnerships. He is currently pursuing a masters in animal physiology from University of Nairobi. Working alongside Naomi, they promote adoption of Conservation Agriculture among the rural communities.
Dr. Nderitu is a Veterinary Doctor and is passionate about working with rural communities. He is also a lecturer at the leading Agricultural Universities in Kenya.
Working for Lisha Jamii his responsibilities entail training the farmers on proper management of livestock for productive outputs. Working alongside Naomi, They promote adoption of Conservation Agriculture among the rural communities.
Pauline Wangari – Office Manager, Nakuru, Kenya
Pauline is a mum of two children, a boy and a girl. Her desire to be part of the Feeding Futures team was as a result of wanting to be part of making it possible for school children to at least have access to what is basic in their learning journey. This in turn gives room for equity to all children.
Having worked as an administrator for years, she brings efficiency and effectiveness to day to day running of activities ensuring proper co-ordination for the whole team.