Not Feeding the Hungry

Under what circumstance would you not give a hungry kid food?

This question pops up every day for everyone working here at Meaningful Volunteer in Uganda.

Numerous studies show that kids can retain much more information when they are operating on a full stomach.  For this reason, we give all our students a jam sandwich and a sugary drink before the lesson starts.

Our students are always keen to get started on their lessons and often turn up quite early.  The mzungus (white people) are quite interesting to the local children, so they turn up as well.

This places us in a tricky position.  We want to feed the students, but we don’t want to feed every child.

Why not?

We just can’t afford it.  If we were perhaps nice to a random kid and gave them a sandwich as well, then no doubt that kid would turn up the next day with their buddies and expect to be fed again.  The process repeats and we end up feeding the whole village!  We just don’t have the money for that.

It does mess with you mind when you give the students food while hungry kids look on.

It will be a bit easier when we have our own self-contained classrooms and no longer have to operate on the front porch of the guesthouse.

Do you disagree? Do you think we should be feeding all the kids?  Great!  Send me some money and I’ll make sure it will happen.