doing everything,
and doing nothing.
—Carolyn Burns, Executive Director of Ukulapha Community Outreach Project
Carolyn Burns, Executive Director of Ukulapha Community Outreach Project joined us from South Africa to tell donors first hand what a difference their contributions are making.
The CHILD Foundation partnered with Ukulapha last year to initiate a protein project.
(Last year funds were also allocated to provide protein supplements at the Metropolitan Mission in India, this year fundraising was just focused on the project in South Africa.)
Ukulapha works in the schools in the township of Slangspruit.
This years donations will go towards:
1.Continuing a kindergarten milk project that provides a cup of milk to 130 students every day.
2. Supplementing lunches with lentils and soy chunks (which the kids apparently all think is chicken) for all 1000+ students in the elementary school
The government schools in South Africa provide with a basic, mainly starch, lunch. Ukulapha has also started a garden at the school to add vegetables to these lunches.
As Carolyn pointed out last night, there is not much point in funding education if students are too malnourished to focus on what they're learning. For many students, this is the only mean they will eat that day.
It only costs 25¢ per day to supplement one child’s diet with a cup of milk a day. There are about 140 students in the kindergarten at Slangspruit Elementary.
The staple diet in the townships is Pap, a maize-porridge. Maize and rice are incomplete proteins—they need to be eaten in combination with other complimentary protein sources such as beans.
Children with protein-energy malnutrition suffer up to 160 days of illness per year. They are much more prone to die from measles, malaria, diarrhea, or pneumonia.