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From Emergency to Sustainability: School Feeding in Zimbabwe

on  December 14, 2021

When a drought hits a farming community, the impact is severe and the recovery long. In 2016, El Nino-induced severe weather struck 11 Southern African countries, many of which experienced their worst drought in 35 years. Not only did rainfall decrease, but temperatures increased significantly, causing widespread crop failure. (Source: SADC Regional Vulnerability Assessment and Analysis Synthesis Report 2016).To mitigate the worst effects of this drought, Rise Against Hunger and Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) launched the Southern Africa School Feeding Initiative (SASFI) in 2017, providing a daily hot meal for students in five countries.This provided relief to financial stress for families, knowing that their children would be fed at school. Most targeted schools reported increased enrollment over the course of the three-year initiative.In the Gokwe North district of Zimbabwe, one of the project areas, 49% of the population was experiencing food insecurity by 2017. Ms. Muzanadzo, the principal at one of the participating schools, highlighted the difficulties of students prior to the school feeding initiative.“School kids used to come to school and complain of stomach pains,” Ms. Muzanadzo shared. “We used to think they were sick but then realized that they were just hungry. After probing them if they had a meal before coming to school, they said they did not due to poverty. This caused low concentration in class. The coming of the food assistance came as a blessing to the school as it solved problems of kids coming to school hungry.”Even in the face of severe crop failure, the families and school staff in Gokwe North showed determination. After two years of serving Rise Against Hunger meals, provided by Rise Against Hunger Italia, the community members began preparing to implement home-grown school feeding (HGSF).HGSF is a model in which schools, with strong parental involvement, produce food at the school site and conduct income-generating activities (IGAs) to earn funds to purchase additional ingredients. In 2019, Rise Against Hunger and ADRA Zimbabwe launched a home-grown school feeding initiative in Gokwe North, called Planting Seeds for Strong Communities.In collaboration with parents, school staff and teachers, the project established school gardens and poultry production. It also provided 2,250 community member farmers with training to help them increase food production, access small loans through Village Saving and Lending Associations (VSLAs), and negotiate better prices with market buyers.By increasing food production in the community, families become more food secure, and schools can purchase surplus food for the school meals.Two keys to success for home-grown school feeding are diversifying food production and finding win-win solutions for schools and the farmers. Grain and seed processing machines hit the sweet spot.Shelling maize and millet by hand is time-consuming and labor-intensive, taking days or even weeks to complete the task. Schools in the project were equipped with motorized shellers, which could complete the task in just a few hours. To pay the school for the service, farmers pay a percentage of the shelled grain to the school, giving it the name “toll-shelling.” Another new crop — sunflowers — is thriving in the dry conditions and alleviating families’ grocery bills.Cooking oil is expensive and hard to find in Gokwe North. Through the project, oil presses were provided to the schools, who also make oil pressing available as a paid service in the community. One farmer, Siphiwe, age 36, pressed enough oil to supply her household needs for a year! And she feeds the sunflower cake (the remainder of the sunflower after pressing) to her flock of turkeys.Because of the ease of processing, farmers feel motivated to grow even greater quantities of maize, millet, and sunflower in future years. Through the in-kind fee for processing, the five schools have gained a total of 48,402 pounds of food for the school meals! That is more than the quantity of food in one shipping container of Rise Against Hunger meals.As project staff, school staff and farmer participants prepare for the next harvest in early 2022, they continue to implement and share the improved agricultural practices with an objective of reaching 3,000 total farmers by year’s end.The combination of school garden production, income-generating activities and increased community food production are expected to support the sustainable operation of the home-grown school feeding for years to come.Are you inspired to support sustainable solutions to hunger this holiday season? Please give now.

About the Author

Julie Savane is the Senior Manager, Programs, on Rise Against Hunger's Global Impact team. She works with our partners to design and implement agriculture and income initiatives for smallholder farmers and entrepreneurs.

More Posts by Julie Savane

Strength, Stability And Hope

The gift that filled Nelly’s table.

“We were yielding very little, and the crops could not sustain us the whole year,” Nelly remembers. As a mother of seven and a farmer with two decades of experience, the stress of inconsistent yields was all-consuming. A poor harvest not only strained her family financially, but also limited their own meals to just two a day. Their story reflects that of many in their fishing and farming village near a lake in the Karonga district of northern Malawi. Here, heavy rainfall makes conventional farming methods nearly impossible. The entire village is, quite literally, saturated in food insecurity — a reality that leaves families struggling to survive season after season without a dependable source of nourishment.

In 2019, Nelly began participating in Harvesting Prosperity and Resilience, a sustainable agriculture project implemented by Rise Against Hunger in partnership with the Foundation for Community Support Services (FOCUS). The project works with 3,100 smallholder farmers in Malawi’s Karonga and Mzimba districts to strengthen food and nutrition security by improving production methods, nutrition practices and household income.

Just one year later, Nelly was ready to expand the variety of crops on her farm. What land once only produced maize began to flourish with sesame, cowpeas, rice and groundnuts during the rainy season (summer), as well as maize and vegetables during the dry season (winter). Through climate-smart agriculture training, she learned new techniques like manure making, pit planting and mulching, crop rotation and intercropping. Equipped with these tools, Nelly’s farm began to thrive.

After the 2023–2024 growing season, she sold enough produce to purchase an ox cart. Her harvests in 2024-2025 season yielded over 500 pounds of crops, including 22 bags of groundnuts, seven bags of maize, 12 tins of sesame and three bags of rice. With this surplus, she was able to invest in a motorbike, which she now uses to transport African doughnuts (mandasi) that she cooks and sells — creating yet another source of income for her family.

The transformation reaches far beyond her finances. Nelly now has the stability to provide for her husband and children. “I am able to eat different food types, pay school fees for my children and fulfill the visions that I have made with my family,” she beams. “I am now sleeping peacefully without any fears of food or paying school fees for the children.”

Her leadership has also grown. Today, Nelly serves as a leader in the Harvesting Prosperity and Resilience project, teaching other farmers in her district to adopt climate-resilient, labor-saving practices. By sharing her knowledge, she is multiplying her impact — empowering her neighbors to experience the same transformation she has achieved.

Across Nelly’s community, food and economic security are on the rise. Lombani, a government extension officer for the region, explains, “I can see the community is being transformed in the sense that in the area, there is food, income and nutrition security. Development is also happening at the household level.”

Nelly reflects on what it means to invest in holistic programs that address the root causes of hunger: “We are now healthy people. Children are going to school after eating their breakfast, having high yields and different types of crops due to conservation agriculture practices. With the support from the project, we have food, and we can access other food items from the market after selling our produce.”

This is the gift that fills: a future full of stability, strength and hope. It fills tables with food, families with security and communities with the resources to thrive. It’s an investment in futures rooted in resilience and hope.