The issue of food security is highly relevant with the effects of climate change being further exacerbated with the multitude of political conflicts ongoing. Food prices are on the rise, and as a result malnutrition is growing, which is detrimental especially to children and youths. It is in this field where schools that provide wholesome meals to their students make a big difference in malnutrition and food security today. The World Food Programme has made it a priority to help countries implement so called School Feeding programs, and now estimates 64 million children are getting school meals in Africa, a number that has been increasing from 38 million in 2013. As we will see, Lytefire has a key role to play in helping schools implement School Feeding programs.
We have already reported on the amazing project outcomes from the schools we have empowered with Lytefire, for example with the Montessori school in Mwanza, Tanzania, baking some 400 bus for their school children on a daily basis. There are two important aspects in which Lytefire is a key to unlock School Feeding programs:
- With Lytefire, the schools stop spending money on charcoal, firewood, LPG and electricity costs for cooking. They are producing their own buns, breads and meals, so instead of buying these, they are able to produce it themselves.
- With our educational trainings, we create local capacity for entrepreneurship. Students, Alumni, youths and women from the community are empowered to run their own bakeries (In many cases the internal usage of the Lytefire by the schools allows for afternoon hours be used by local bakers to run their own solar income-generating activity).
Because the Lytefire pays for itself through the fuel cost savings and the increased profitability of schools running their own bakeries, kitchens and food processing, Lytefire can be a great way to facilitate schools to adopt School Feeding programs.
Last week I attended a seminar initiated by the Foreign Ministry of Finland in collaboration with Education Finland and FinCeed, where I learned about the large market of schools and how suitable our solution can be for them. Finland is seen as an expert when it comes to education, and together with the Finnish institutions part of the event we started to develop ways in which we can support the spread of Finnish innovations like Lytefire for the education sector worldwide.
If you are a school and want to benefit from Lytefire Ovens and Education, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. If you are an NGO or GO aiming for a transformational impact, we are happy to talk. Contact us
