This International School Meals Day, we wanted to celebrate the fantastic work of our partner charity, African Promise. African Promise is a small, dedicated charity who are passionate about the schools, communities and children they support in Kasigau, Kenya. Our relationship with African Promise goes back a long way, given our mutual association with the Kasigau region and admiration for their hard work. Our partnership with them sees African Promise benefit from the donation of 2% of sales on all crafts, jewellery and homeware sourced by us from artisans within Kenya, including woven sisal baskets handmade by women in the very community in which their partner schools are located. Our Co-founder, Bee, says; "Like Charles (African Promise’s founder), we have fallen in love with this rural part of Kenya; its red dust roads winding to the various villages and the beautiful Mt. Kasigau that dominates the landscape keep on drawing us back. During these visits we have also had the privilege of seeing the schools and witnessing first-hand how Charles and his team work to uplift the lives of the children that attend them and therefore decided that this was the perfect charity to work with.”
One of the fantastic programmes that African Promise run is a school meal programme. They provide a daily hot lunch to all pupils across their network of partner schools (around 2,500 children!) who would otherwise go hungry due to the lack of any government funded programme. By providing a daily lunch, African Promise remove the barrier of hunger allowing children to properly engage and get more out of their education. Since the programme was launched in September 2013, the charity has provided more than 2.5 million meals. They currently deliver more than 50,000 meals per month! These basic but nutritious meals are often the only guaranteed meal of the day for many of the children, encouraging them to attend school and allowing them to thrive. Just £12 provides one pupil with a daily term-time lunch for a whole year! You can support African Promises' School Meal Programme directly here.
So far we have raised over £680 for African Promise through the sale of our artisan products made in Kenya. That amount would equal school meals for 56 children for a whole year, thanks to our customers support! But there's so much more to African Promise than just school meals. Their support extends to upgrading school buildings, providing clean water, funding teacher salaries, providing educational activities and much, much more. You can find more information on their website, or read our interview with the charity's founder, Charles Coldman, here. You can shop our Kenyan Baskets, Kenyan Olive Wood, Kenyan Jewellery and Kenyan Soapstone online and in store now. 2% from every purchase will go straight to African Promise and help support their amazing work.