Hope Is A Verb - Wawira Njiru - Engine Of Potential

Episode Date: August 8, 2025

Meet Wawira Njiru, a nutritionist and social entrepreneur in Kenya who’s gone from serving lunch to 25 children out of a makeshift kitchen to establishing Food4Education, a nonprofit organisation that serves half a million hot, nutritious and affordable school meals every day. From the uncalculated cost of childhood hunger to powering an 'engine of potential', Wawira’s story shows how thinking big and starting small can change the world. Topics discussed: why the world's future leaders need a school meal today, the logistics of feeding half a million kids, the power of scaling a simple idea, why optimism matters, the ripple effects of school meals on communities and how a well-fed future could change Africa. You can support Wawira’s work at Food4Education.org and for more inspiration, check out her 2025 TED talk here.This podcast is hosted by Angus Hervey and Amy Davoren-Rose from ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fix The News⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Audio sweeting by Anthony Badolato at Ai3 – audio and voice.

Welcome back to Hope is a Verb. We are so happy to be back, episode two. And it feels like already this season is just taking off. We have had so many downloads, so much love. I think it just goes to show that people need a little bit of extra good news right now. I think we do. We really appreciate all the feedback and all the messages that we've been getting from all of you, our old listeners and all of our new listeners as well. I've got to say today's conversation is one that I'm really excited about.

We have been waiting to have this conversation for a while. So over the past decade, we have been quietly tracking the rise of school meal programs around the world. It's this global shift in the way that we think about nutrition, in the way that we think about nutrition, in the way. we think about education, how we combine those two things, and what started as a basic support system in a couple of countries has quietly grown into one of the most powerful tools on the planet for fighting hunger, keeping kids in school, and even boosting local economies in the process. It's kind of one of these really beautiful, simple, incredibly powerful solutions where you're

combining both food and education together. when the world was rocked by the COVID pandemic, school meals were one of the first things communities fought to bring back. And today, there's been this groundswell. Over 400 million children receive a meal at school every day. There's nearly one in four school-aged kids worldwide. It is truly a global phenomenon.

This is one of my favourite stories of progress. It was also one of the very first stories that I wrote when I joined Fixer News five years ago. And it's just been incredible to watch this really simple solution explode. One of the people that is responsible for that is while we're at Njiru. She's a dietitian in Kenya. She runs an organisation called Food for Education.

And she started back in 2012 feeding 25 kids out of a small kitchen. And today she serves half a million kids every single day. When you talk about scale, you're talking about. we're a story. I just I love to this conversation. I think we should also Amy give everyone a heads up here that the tapping they're going to hear in my audio set up actually comes from rain on the roof of my car because we recorded this conversation while I was outside my kids swimming lesson in the middle of the pouring rain and it was the only slot that you could get with Warira but we were willing to do it because as you'll hear she's someone pretty

special. I feel like it's almost like we responded to the bat signal. When we are told that we get to talk to one of these incredible people who are changing the world, we will take that call anywhere, anytime. Come rain, come shine. All right, Wawira and Jiru. as a verb. We have been following in your work for a lot longer than you probably realize. And school meals is something that is really close to our hearts. This is a real privilege and a real honor. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Is there anything in the world that's giving you hope right now? Is there any good news? I think there's a lot of good news. It's a hard time to find it because there's a lot of stories about

war and craziness and things like that happening. But I find it every day when I go to the schools, I find it every day with my family. I find it every day with my communities with our staff. It's not on the news, but it's in real life. I think when you step away from that and look at who's around you, if you have good people around you or look at the meaningful work being done in the world, which is a lot. You know, people are resisting. People are building community organizations. people are responding to real needs that people have, and that's giving me a lot of hope that human beings will find a way to find each other, and that's something that's giving me a lot of hope. Well, as Gus said, one thing that has been giving us a lot of hope over the last

few years is the rise of school meal programs in so many different parts of the world. Now, something that you talk about a lot is the cost of childhood hunger. Could you explain what you mean by that and also why these particular programs are such a big part of the solution? That's a really good question. And if you want to put a number to it, hunger costs Africa about 16.5% of GDP. And so that I think is a big number to think about. And it's what has been estimated. But when I think about the cost of childhood hunger, I think of it as everything.

You know, it's the future of the world at stake. But when I say everything, I mean the potential, which is uncalculated, of people who could grow up to be the next scientist, the next solvers of the biggest world problems, peacemakers. We should need a lot more peacemakers right now, future of world leaders, are being held back by childhood hunger. And so school meals programs are having our incredible momentum right now, because, people are realizing that, especially after COVID, all kids were going to school to eat. The teacher was part of the solution, like the education part, but food is the one thing that drives kids to school. We have a board member who says he used to look every morning and see if there was smoke coming out of the kitchen at the school. And if there was, he'd go to school.

If there was no smoke, he'd stay home because there was nothing to go to school for. And because he saw that every day, he kept going to school. And now he's a doctor. to leads Africa's largest health NGO, Abref. And that is an incredible story of what food and education can do and what the cost could alternatively be, which is not having people like that changing our continent in our world. Oh, my goodness. My mind is racing in a million different directions.

And it's such a different way to look at things because I think it's tempting to look at school meals programs as almost like an add-on to the education. but what you're describing is actually a very different kind of process. When did you decide that this was something that you were going to tackle? And why did you decide to start doing it? So I grew up here in Kenya and I grew up with a sense of a lot of community service. So my parents were pastors and they were also healthcare workers.

So it was service, service, service. every day, like, would give away everything we have. An example is I gave recently a 10, actually. Our dad sold the TV so that he could help someone who needed money. Our only TV, and we begged him for that TV. So that service piece was just so ingrained in us. And like, we belong to a community. We belong to each other, right?

And I think that really helped in terms of orienting my way of seeing myself in the world. I saw myself as someone who had gotten education, even if my parents were low, middle class, and then kind of rose up to have more economic opportunities. It meant that that came with responsibility. They'd come from pure poverty. They grew up in that. And so every little inch was like we have a responsibility to each other. And I grew up seeing that.

I grew up seeing that everything we had could be shared. Everything we had could be distributed amongst many people. people. But also a sense of I had more than others, even if in reality we didn't have a lot, but we had food. I could go to school every day. There was that. And when I finished high school, my parents took out a loan. They took me to Australia for university because you get a work permit as a student and you could work and make the rest of the school fees. So my parents were like, we only took a loan for one semester and you have to care for yourself. So you have to pay rent. I have to pay school fees. I have to figure out.

what to do. So you have to like go into yourself. But that was against everything I learned growing as a kid. It was you go into yourself, but also you help everyone around you. So I was volunteering for Wall Vision in Australia. I was volunteering for a youth organization called Oak Tree. I went to Canberra with a youth leadership movement. And I remember we were advocating for the increase of aid by Australia. And it was my first time I went to a member of parliament's office. I'd never even done that in Kenya because in Kenya, they're not as accessible. And I was like, oh my God, these kids are like my age and we're going into a member of parliament's office and telling them what we want. And that actually gave me the confidence as they came back to Kenya after to think about

how do we engage government. And so in that time, I still thought about what can I do back home, what can I do around me, volunteered for breakfast programs in Adelaide, which is where I went to university. And so I reached out to my parents and I asked them because I still had a church What can I do? What can we do together? And they went to the schools and said, what is the biggest thing that kids need? And it was food. Kids were running away from school. They'd go pick vegetables that had been thrown away in the markets just so that they could get food.

So we started a school feeding program, raised some money through friends in Adelaide, send it back home, built a makeshift kitchen. I started feeding 25 kids a day, and that was 2012. I want to ask you about scaling because I actually came across your story just before the pandemic started and I remember hearing about your organisation and we actually wrote a little profile piece for you in our newsletter in 2020 and you were feeding 30,000 kids a day back then and that was amazing we were blown away we were like this is incredible your story perhaps more than any other is just such a good example of take the first step you say right here are a bunch of kids there's 25 kids we're going to give them a simple meal.

Almost anyone who listens to this podcast that is within their capability, they can do that. So you take this first step, and then you take another step. And then by 2020, you're feeding 30,000 children a day, but you're just warming up because it's not 2025 and you're feeding close to half a million people, maybe you're feeling even more a day now.

So how on earth do you get from a first step of feeding 25 kids to getting to half a million kids? First of all, I never expected it for anyone listening. I always used to say we want to feed a million kids a day. But my first goal was actually 100 kids a day. And so when we started with the 25, it was 100 kids a day. And then I hit that goal and it's like, oh, I got to make a bigger goal. And then it was a thousand kids a day.

And then you hit it and you're like, oh, I've got to make a bigger one. And now it's a million kids a day, which are going to reach the next two years. And central kitchens have been very critical to our scale because we're able to add 10,000, 20,000. The kitchen you're speaking about, it's about 60,000 kids. And so the numbers can multiply if you sort of have that unit of production that is quite large. And so what we did is we started multiplying the number of kitchens that we had through, first of all, fundraising. So getting more resources enabled us to build more kitchens. And then using those resources in a very innovative way to test the type of kitchens that were best to scale.

And so you start thinking, if you're feeding a million kids a day, you have to design what is the best central kitchen model to scale, what is the best operational model to scale, what is the best team structure within that kitchen to scale. And our team has been incredible in thinking through that and helping build that sort of structure within the organization. The other thing that has really helped is government partnerships. Right now, a lot of the kids that we feed are subsidized by government funds.

And we're also seeing school feeding becoming a thing in Kenya. The national government has a problem. towards school feeding and also across the continent. Other countries now are looking at Kenya and saying Nairobi can do it, why can't Kigali, why can't Lusaka, why can't other cities across the continent and hopefully the world as well. So I think in terms of timelines, starting in 2012 and then being at $30,000 in 2020, it's a really long time to grow.

And then from 2020 to now being at $570,000, so the growth, path is very, very much more significant, but it wouldn't have happened without the previous years. Those years were so critical in helping us ready for the big jump. You know, Amy, the whole way through this conversation, I kept on thinking that she makes it sound so simple, but actually to take an idea like this and to scale it to this level is incredibly complex. There are a lot of people with a lot of good ideas and a lot of them initially do get some traction. But I think what really makes this one stand out is that she was able to keep going and kept on making the right decisions to get to the point where it is now

making a significant impact at a national scale across Kenya. And that is not easy. Anyone who's ever tried to scale any kind of organization knows how difficult that actually is, even if the idea itself is pretty simple. And I think that for me is what makes this such an impressive initiative. The thing I can't get out of my head is the way where we're a talks about feeding the future. And this knock-on effect of kids go to school to get a meal so their attendance increases, their nutrition improves, which then helps their concentration in the classroom. And then as a result of that, their grades increase, which expands their opportunities for higher education or coming up with the next big idea.

I mean, it's actually mind-blowing to think about the impact not just on one kid's life, but then the impact that that kid might have on the world. School meals is one of those topics. The more we unpack it, the more we dig into it, the more potential there is. How does this big system work? Where does the food get cooked? Who cooks it? How does it get to the schools?

All the things. First of all, we have about 29 central kitchens and urban areas, and we have over 100 rural kitchens. So those are much smaller, but their distribution is different. So in urban areas, we're distributing with trucks, and in rural areas, we're using motorbikes. because the roads sometimes are not as tarmac and there's more complication in terms of logistics. And the schools are smaller as well.

So you can fit the food on a motorcycle. We sauce locally. We have different types of ingredients that we sauce beans, lentils, tomatoes, so vegetables and things like that, all our meals, plant-based. The complication we're sourcing for us is usually seasonality. So we're constantly tweaking the menu, making it align with what is being harvested at that time. We source about 100 tons of food. every single day across the country and most of our kitchens are 24-hour kitchens, especially in

urban areas. So this prep happening in the afternoons and early evenings and then the cooking starts in the middle of the night and then distribution starts about 8am. So after the cooking process is done, it goes up to the schools at the same time across the country, which is a headache for us. So 1230 is when kids start coming. I say it's a headache because, for example, in New York. Some kids will eat at 11 and other kids will eat at midday. But for us, it's the same time across the country. That's our most critical time that every child must receive a meal. There's no breakdown. The truck's got there on time. The food is okay. From a food safety perspective, temperature checks before serving. The food goes out to the kids. It's served by staff.

And then the kids eat. A lot of kids will bring their own lunch boxes because we serve a big proportion. Some of them will take it back home because they have siblings or they have people back home who don't have a meal. So that enables that flexibility for the child. But we have a team of about close to 5,000 people who make this happen every single day. So we serve about 1,500 schools and the parents contribute, philanthropy contributes, and in some places government contributes. So where government contributes, for example, in Nairobi, the cost for parents is very, very minimal. I think in Nairobi parents pay about $0.3 per meal to have that ownership, but that government partnership is really carrying the parents to be able to deliver to their kids. And in that contribution,

parents do it through mobile money, which is very, very prevalent in Kenya. And so the kids at lunchtime will be wearing a wristband that is called tap to eat. And that tapping process happens before they get their meal to get that data of who's eating today to also give that data back to their parents, or did their child come to school? So just to create that accountability and to enable us to make sure that we're tracking how many meals we're delivering every day. So far we've been talking on a really big scale here, you know, incredible systems that you've set up, and I'm sure a lot of it's been through trial and error, but a lot of

it's incredibly innovative and really smart at scale here. I want to bring it back down to the individual and human level. You must see pretty big changes, right, in these kids that are starting to get meals. Are there any stories that come to mind? So many. And I think that's actually the thing that keeps me, even in the hardest times, keeps me going in those stories and those individuals. Some of the first 25 kids 13 years ago have finished high school and come back and work with us. For example, Jackson, Jackson works in one of our kitchens and he did a day in my life story of like, this is our cooking process.

This is how we do it and everything. And I was watching that video, and he's still the same kid in ways like he's an adult now, but he has the same characteristics as he had as a kid. He was curious, it was very talkative, it was just like a really good, charming kid. So to see him in this video describing our cooking process, which fed him, that has become such a full circle story for me in terms of seeing this engine that powers full potential. hopefully, and that full potential coming back and serving us and building the engine of the organization, which is serving other kids. And I've been reflecting a lot on that and how it sounds

like a simple thing to give a child a meal, but to see Jackson, to see all the others who work with us right now and others who've gone on to do different things, they message me sometimes with social media. You know, they'll say, I remember you. I remember, oh, my God, that meal like meant so much to me. My mom didn't have a job at that time. and I feel so grateful that I'm also able to see that because a lot of people do things to help other people and sometimes you don't get to hear what that meant to that person. So to have that is such a gift for me

and I feel very grateful to experience that in my lifetime. I want to ask you about where it gets hard because it's nice nuts. It's 2025, you've got a great origin story, you did your TED talk, everything's all nicely wrapped up in a bow. but it wasn't always destined to be, right? And I'm sure there must have been moments where it was really difficult. Can you tell us about some of those dark moments and maybe what keeps you going through that?

The moments are sort of endless. And even today, there are pockets of things that you still need to figure out, right? And I think for anyone who's building an organization, it's very hard to say you get to a place where you feel like everything is working and everything is like perfect. But, you know, working with government is very, very complicated, and that continues to be something that we're constantly navigating. We have the privilege of working with great government partners, but they're also navigating very complex systems as well.

And I've felt many times, why are we doing this? This is so hard. And I've also had people criticize and say, why did you have to go work with government? They've said, you should have just done it yourself. You should have just done this with philanthropy and parents, it away from government and things like that. But I truly believe that the way for sustainability, especially for school fields in public schools, is working hand in hand with government and making

sure that we're able to create a partnership that enables this children to benefit. So navigating that is very, very tricky, but what keeps me grounded is going to the school. So I try and do that as much as I can, go to the schools, meet the kids and spend time with them, and see what is made possible by the hard times. This might be a good spot to ask you about the idea of optimism or the title of this podcast, Hope is a verb. What role does your attitude and what role does optimism have to play in all of this? I love the title, first of all, that hope is a verb because it's similar to when you hear

faith without action is dead. So, you know, without doing something about your optimism, it's like lives within you is not expressed. And food for education for me is an expression of my optimism, of my hope. I spent so much time with the kids. And what I learned in that time after I moved back from Australia was, first of all, these were incredible people who had so much potential in their parents were navigating complex situations from work to life to all these things. And there were children who are sitting there looking at this adults, creating a world around them and wondering what is my place in this world. And so how food for education has been designed from making sure that the meals are very nutritious, making sure that they're delicious and the kids actually like it, because it was so ingrained to me that how people feel and how we deliver service gives them dignity, gives them hope, and gives them their ability to see themselves as worthy.

when we give you a meal. We're showing you that this is who you are. You're deserving of this, at this level of quality. And I've never noticed this, actually, until I was with someone in a school, and he told me to watch the kids when they're lining up and when they get their meal and they're walking away. And you can see their faces change, honestly.

I've never noticed how much their faces change from when they get their meal and when they're leaving. And that is repetitive. It's every single day. It's all across our schools. And that gives me so much optimism because you see someone who is able to see who they are. And if children can grow up with a sense of,

I am worthy, I am deserving, I have dignity, I can live up to my potential, then there's nothing that they can't achieve for our country and for our continent and our world. And so what I see for education, and I hope it becomes, is something that kids will look back and say, you know what? I learned my wealth and I learned my dignity from a long time ago, and no one can take that for me. But I think especially for countries like ours that have had a history of a lot of oppression, a lot of colonization, a lot of stripping of dignity to return that back to people, I think is something that I feel very, very privileged to participate.

that is amazing yeah that was a good answer yeah you know we all know about the power of being given a meal we all know about the power of food it doesn't surprise me that jackson remembers the first meal that you gave him but the way you're speaking about how we deliver the food how we give it to people that is a whole other world one thing i want to go back to to is this engine of potential and you touched on it a little bit here because I know a big part of your work is helping people reimagine Africa as a source of solutions and innovation. Can you speak to this a bit? I've been very privileged to build an organization with people who understand the problem and can see the solutions. You know, majority of our team is local, close to

100%. And a lot of them are young people who are also excited to be part of a solution. And I reflect on that a lot. One time we were onboarding a new board member. And I remember him saying, oh, my God, young people are like doing stuff. And I was like, yeah. And he's like, no, no, no, you don't understand. Like, if you go to another company, young people are like interns. You know, they're sort of like in the back. But for us, young people are in the forefront. They're running the kitchens. You know, Africa's largest kitchens. The one that produces 60,000 meals is run by a 24, 25-year-old. And for me, that potential, it starts with the kids that we feed, but it's gone into our staff,

really making sure that we're pulling out what the best that you can offer and you understand the problem, you understand the solution really well because you're from here. Then thinking about how we can harness the solutions and also communicate that Africans and a lot of people here have the solutions that we need. And so when I think about the engine of potential, for me, it starts with the kids. It goes to our team. And then it also goes to our ecosystem in terms of farmers now who have a reliable market because we cook 100 tons every single school day.

And those farmers, a lot of them are women, same as our staff, actually. A lot of them are women. And taking people who are traditionally not seen or given opportunities and saying, no, actually, I think you can do more. I think we can give you more opportunity from the suppliers, the farmers, to the staff. And I love that we created an engine of potential from the kids all across the valley chain and are able to have that reliable source of income and build for their families in their lives. I gave a story about Mary, whose first delivery to us was with a motorbike,

just a couple of kilograms of beans and lentils. And now she delivers trucks and traps, I think, over six. 60, 70 trucks of food. These are like 10-tod trucks because that's how much our business has grown and that's how much we've grown. Out of the 5,000 staff that we have, about 60% of them are the parents of the kids that we feed. And that's been also quite intentional in terms of enabling them to participate in their own

child feeding and to get an income. That's a thing that gives me so much pride. You know, women who came who'd been looking for work for years or have. had never had a formal paying job. In the beginning, I used to notice that their hair changes. They can go to the salon. Their clothes are not as run down. They've bought new clothes, and their kids go to school more consistently.

And we have parents who started with us when their kids were quite young. Now they're in university. And you see that pride of, I never thought my child could go to university, and I could afford to take them to university. and that's a really big part of what we do is making sure that even the people we're working with can support their families as well. I always say school feeding is good for kids and it's good for adults because it enables an entire ecosystem. All right. I want us to daydream a bit. So it's 10 years in the future. All kids across Kenya are getting a school meal. What does it look like?

What does the future look like? A well-fed future. I think a future, hopefully, not just in Kenya. I'm very excited about hopefully more countries. For example, Ethiopia has a 37% stunting rate. So reversing that and changing some of those statistics is what I will hopefully 10 years from now think about is a study that says malnutrition has reduced or stunting has reduced in these key countries. And I think if we can create that engine of opportunity, engine of fulfilling potential, that enables kids to have a chance to go to school and to study, but then to fulfill the potential from like a work perspective, from a likelihood's perspective, I want to be able to contribute to that and be able to say that we were able to change some of that statistics.

because I grew up with people around me, my aunts, my uncles, who were in very significant poverty. And I could see how much getting a job meant to them, how much change. For example, their kids being able to eat meant to them. My dad grew up in significant poverty. Even food was a big thing for them. And the fact that he got people to support him,

he was able to go to school. I see the impact of that in my life. So I hope we can see more of that across generations. How can people support your work? We have listeners from all over the world and people like to help. What can people do both financially but also what actions can they take? Obviously, donations, volunteering, support in any kind of ways, really appreciated. The best way to get in touch with us or to see the options is on our website.

So it's www. Food, the number four, education.org. and our goal is to feed a million kids in Kenya to expand to new countries and feed 2 million more so hopefully by 2030 we're looking at a number of 3 million in Kenya and outside so very excited to have the support and very grateful that we've gotten here which is more than I expected.

Well we're a last question for you what does the word hope mean to you? The first one that came to my mind is being scaborn because I love that. Because I think it's, yeah, being stubborn because there's a world that I think can exist and I believe can exist. And I'm going to be stubborn until we make that happen. And that's what I see as hope.

What I take really from this conversation and the thing that gets me most excited about it is that where we're and then this amazing team around her have pioneered this model that works and they've done the hard yards and I just think about well what happens if other people can copy it this is a solution that has now been proven on the ground it is over a decade old we know that it works

and I just wonder what's going to happen if it gets picked up and spread across not just Africa but in other countries all around the world for me what resonates is that it's not just what we're is doing, it's how she's doing it. The whole idea of serving dignity and possibility

every day with every meal is something that I will be walking away with. I feel like the only downside about these conversations is that it kind of puts us all on the hook. It's this invitation and a little bit of a push that we can all do something. I think that's what makes it real though, right? She started with 25 kids, and we all look at that and go, I could do that.

And you just think, who else is doing the equivalent of feeding 25 kids a day and could be at that scale in five or 10 years' time? It leaves me feeling really hopeful about the future of both nutrition and education. School meals really can't change the world. We say that about a lot of things, but in this case, it's true. Make sure you check out where we were as TED Talk. It's just been released. It's how we met what we.

We are in the first place and tune in next week. For the next episode of Hope is a verb, we are going to be doing something entirely different. We're so happy to kick off this new chapter of conversations and turn up the volume on these extraordinary people. And make sure you stay tuned because later this season, we're releasing a shot at history, our three-part documentary series about the malaria vaccine.

We'd like to thank you. our paying subscribers for making projects like this podcast possible. If you're interested in finding out more about our work, check out fixthenews.com. There are a lot of podcasts out there. It means a lot to us that you chose this one. This podcast is recorded in Australia on the lands of the Garagal and the Wurundry and Wayorong people. If you enjoyed this conversation and would like to support Hope as a verb, make sure you subscribe and leave a review. Thanks for listening.