The Kitchen at Sidai Primary

As planned and after several intensive weeks of building work at Sidai Primary School, the kitchen was completed and ready to use at the start of the new school year in January 2023. This time we decided to incorporate some rather strong colours in finishing the kitchen!

Take a look inside ….

at the three fuel-saving ovens, which parents were fascinated by at the grand opening. This is the third time we have used Ezekiel from Nakuru to manufacture the fuel efficient ovens and silos.

In addition, we have a kitchen store with one of our ‘trademark’ silos, designed for long-term storage of maize grains, the staple food of Kenya. This enables the meals programme to buy enough maize to last the whole school year at low, harvest-time prices. It is something that even government ministers have never seen before and is viewed as a unique and valuable solution to high prices and post-harvest losses.

Inside the kitchen

Grand Opening and Meals Programme Launch

When starting school meals at Sidai, it was considered important to take the opportunity to engage the parents again and to remind them that this is a partnership and that we will hand over responsibility for school meals to parents over time.

With this in mind, we held a Grand Opening event and were honoured to have the County Minister of Education, Hon Zipporah Ngugi, grace the occasion and officially open the kitchen at Sidai.

You can see Ms Ngugi unveiling the plaque.

We were also thrilled to welcome special guests:-

  • Madam Mary, Head Teacher of Mukinyai Primary School who kindly gave an  encouraging speech to parents and teachers about how partnership works and that they should make the most of the opportunity they have been given by engaging well with FF and applying what they are taught.
  • The Chair of the Mukinyai Pastors Group who offered his support to mentor pastors in Sidai about their role in the partnership.

The roles for the two partners, FF and Sidai Primary School Community, were clearly explained to the 110 family members. The following banner is in a permanent position on the wall of the kitchen, to remind everyone of the timescales.

As well as local government attention, there was also much interest from the Kenyan media. News networks attended the launch, with two even giving a live interview and report during the day.