How Emakhandeni’s Soup Kitchen Feeds 300 Pupils Before School

At 5:45 every weekday morning, Sister Beatrice Sibanda lights three paraffin stoves in a tin shelter behind her Emakhandeni home. By 6:30, three hundred bowls of porridge, peanut butter and bananas are ready.

The Emakhandeni Breakfast Club has fed local primary school pupils every school day for six years. There are no NGO logos on the walls. There is no website. “Just neighbours,” Sister Beatrice insists.

Funding comes from a rotating stokvel of 14 households who each contribute $5 a month. The bananas are donated by a wholesaler in Renkini. The peanut butter is made on Saturdays by a small group of grandmothers.

“A child cannot learn long division on an empty stomach,” Sister Beatrice said. “That is not nutrition policy. That is common sense.”