60% of kids in Kenya can’t depend on three meals a day. For kids 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 more durable to study on an empty abdomen.
Learn the way Food4Education scaled as much as serving half 1,000,000 college meals a day with Cisco’s assist.
Wawira Njiru, Founder and Government Director of Food4Education, understood from the beginning that know-how was key to scaling up her operation dramatically sufficient to fulfill the each day dietary wants of a whole bunch of hundreds of younger learners. Her group created a deeply tech-based resolution to assist get rid of starvation and be certain that school-going youngsters have entry to a wholesome meal.
Food4Education’s progressive Tap2Eat system—a wise fee resolution—ensures that youngsters in Kenya obtain nutritious meals in school. Through the use of a wearable wristband linked to a cellular pockets, youngsters can simply scan, eat, and give attention to studying with out worrying about starvation.
Scaling up from 3,000 to over 500,000 meals served each day
In 2018, Cisco awarded the World Citizen Prize for Youth Management to Wawira to create and take a look at this know-how. 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 creating their Tap2Eat app and platform.
In 2022, we offered a know-how grant of Webex, Meraki, and Cisco Umbrella applied sciences. Our know-how permits Food4Education to gather and use information analytics to boost their operations and choices, mitigate cyber threats, and securely join their operations, platform, and program choices. We additionally offered a money grant to allow additional growth and scaling of their program to help 100,000 youngsters a day.
Right this moment, over 500,000 youngsters can Tap2Eat lunch in school each day utilizing the Tap2Eat cellular app and wristband. The wristband makes use of Close to-Subject Communication (NFC) know-how to allow seamless transactions, making certain college students obtain meals with out the necessity for money or bodily contact.
Refined analytics and know-how to optimize outcomes
The system additionally verifies meal supply to youngsters and sends real-time information on to Food4Education’s operational dashboards. This method ensures correct monitoring of meal portions and uptake, enabling predictive analytics and more practical meal planning for the long run.
Mother and father, philanthropy, and authorities all contribute to the price of each day meals—conserving this system regular, scalable, and sustainable.
The effectiveness of the answer is plain—and the kids are getting nourished in additional methods than one. As Wawira places it, “Each lunchtime, they’ll simply go faucet, so it provides dad and mom a really excessive degree of visibility,” she stated, “however it additionally provides youngsters a way of possession and a way of pleasure.”
In faculties that serve meals by Tap2Eat, truancy is nearly zero. Educational efficiency is bettering, and attendance has elevated by as much as 30% in lots of areas.
Collaborating to realize exponential affect
Cisco’s partnership with Food4Education, the progressive use of know-how, 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 affect companion that embodies our shared values round fundamental vitamin and high quality training for everybody, whereas additionally demonstrating the ability of our incubator mannequin for nonprofits. Via our distinctive strategy, we scout for nice concepts and dynamic founders, after which help their early-stage, tech-enabled ideas by implementation, validation, and scaling.
For Cisco, funding nice concepts is simply the start. We convey the most effective of Cisco—our know-how, 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 aim. And it’s a aim shared with Wawira and Food4Education—as she places it: “I may write a guide about our fantastic relationship with Cisco!”
She explains, “Cisco has given us follow-on funding to enhance our use of know-how 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 when it comes to our conferencing and our skill to speak and collaborate higher.”
See the story in movement
With Cisco’s help, Food4Education is altering a whole bunch of hundreds of lives daily—and counting—fostering the following technology of learners and getting ready them to take part absolutely within the fashionable financial system. To get the total story, watch our newly launched documentary-style video.
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