60% of kids in Kenya can’t rely on three meals a day. For youngsters in underserved communities throughout Africa, training stays the surest path to a safer future — and but starvation inhibits studying and optimum growth for a majority of the nation’s younger individuals. It’s a lot tougher to study on an empty abdomen.
Find out how Food4Education scaled as much as serving half one million faculty meals a day with Cisco’s assist.
Wawira Njiru, Founder and Government Director of Food4Education, understood from the beginning that expertise was key to scaling up her operation dramatically sufficient to satisfy the each day dietary wants of lots of of 1000’s of younger learners. Her group created a deeply tech-based answer to assist get rid of starvation and make sure that school-going youngsters have entry to a wholesome meal.
Food4Education’s modern Tap2Eat system—a sensible cost answer—ensures that youngsters in Kenya obtain nutritious meals at college. Through the use of a wearable wristband linked to a cellular pockets, youngsters can simply scan, eat, and deal with studying with out worrying about starvation.
Scaling up from 3,000 to over 500,000 meals served each day
In 2018, Cisco awarded the International Citizen Prize for Youth Management to Wawira to create and check this expertise. On the time, the group was feeding 3,000 youngsters a day in Kenya. The funding enabled her group to scale from feeding 3,000 youngsters a day to 10,000 youngsters a day whereas additionally growing their Tap2Eat app and platform.
In 2022, we supplied a expertise grant of Webex, Meraki, and Cisco Umbrella applied sciences. Our expertise permits Food4Education to gather and use information analytics to reinforce their operations and choices, mitigate cyber threats, and securely join their operations, platform, and program choices. We additionally supplied a money grant to allow additional growth and scaling of their program to assist 100,000 youngsters a day.
At present, over 500,000 youngsters can Tap2Eat lunch at college each day utilizing the Tap2Eat cellular app and wristband. The wristband makes use of Close to-Subject Communication (NFC) expertise to allow seamless transactions, guaranteeing college students obtain meals with out the necessity for money or bodily contact.
Refined analytics and expertise to optimize outcomes
The system additionally verifies meal supply to youngsters and sends real-time information on to Food4Education’s operational dashboards. This technique ensures correct monitoring of meal portions and uptake, enabling predictive analytics and simpler meal planning for the long run.
Dad and mom, philanthropy, and authorities all contribute to the price of each day meals—preserving this system regular, scalable, and sustainable.
The effectiveness of the answer is simple—and the youngsters are getting nourished in additional methods than one. As Wawira places it, “Each lunchtime, they’ll simply go faucet, so it provides mother and father a really excessive stage of visibility,” she stated, “but it surely additionally provides youngsters a way of possession and a way of pleasure.”
In faculties that serve meals by means of Tap2Eat, truancy is nearly zero. Tutorial efficiency is bettering, and attendance has elevated by as much as 30% in lots of areas.
Collaborating to realize exponential impression
Cisco’s partnership with Food4Education, the modern use of expertise, and a dynamic enterprise technique based mostly on community-centric options to longstanding challenges have helped this system develop and thrive.
Food4Education is a social impression associate that embodies our shared values round primary vitamin and high quality training for everybody, whereas additionally demonstrating the ability of our incubator mannequin for nonprofits. By way of our distinctive method, we scout for nice concepts and dynamic founders, after which assist their early-stage, tech-enabled ideas by means of implementation, validation, and scaling.
For Cisco, funding nice concepts is simply the start. We convey the most effective of Cisco—our expertise, our experience, and our innovation—to the connection. Setting our non-profit companions up for long run success and sustainability is all the time our purpose. And it’s a purpose shared with Wawira and Food4Education—as she places it: “I may write a ebook about our fantastic relationship with Cisco!”
She explains, “Cisco has given us follow-on funding to enhance our use of expertise throughout the group, from utilizing Meraki throughout our operation, discovering methods to attach all our units which can be utilized in Tap2Eat throughout an enormous community of faculties, to serving to us by way of our conferencing and our skill to speak and collaborate higher.”
See the story in movement
With Cisco’s assist, Food4Education is altering lots of of 1000’s of lives each day—and counting—fostering the following technology of learners and getting ready them to take part absolutely within the trendy financial system. To get the complete story, watch our newly launched documentary-style video.
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