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Sustainable Food Communities
As part of our One Million Meals program, we are reaching out to and supporting local community initiatives, particularly associated with schools. These initiatives have a wonderful combination of healthy food for kids, parent and community involvement, support for local businesses, and extremely cost efficient operations, enabling the funds to serve as many children with as many meals as possible. In this page - we describe what our template for sustainable food communities looks like.
It starts with schools
These programs are a collaboration between schools, parents and the community, all of whom are driven by love for their children. It is an amazing way to get started.
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See the picture on the left for an example of such a school.
It starts with the community
The effort to provide healthy and regular food for the schoolchildren is a labor of love between the parents, the school and the community! In some cases, the food is prepared by the parents themselves - who take turns coming into the school to cook!
Food is locally sourced, creating many positive outcomes - healthy seasonal and local produce for the children, economic benefit for local businesses, and low cost all around.
See an example on the right - where mothers cook in a small kitchen at the school itself.
The Food
Here is an example from a school we visited recently:​They serve rice and 2 curries. On the day of our visit, it was vegetable rice, dhal, and onion tempered. They try to keep it as interesting as possible within the budget since these kids are under 10 years old. Sprats and dried fish are provided at times.
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See the picture on the left for an example of such a meal. The community makes an effort to source the most healthy and nutritious content that the funds can accomodate - because these meals are for their own children.
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The cost effectiveness is profound. On average - each meal costs between 12 cents and 25 cents US. This means that a $1000 can provide up to 8000 meals!