Malindi update!

3rd May 2019

Image: Jersey sponsorhip has enabled Ruth Smith to roll out a lunch programme for all children at St Clement's School in Malindi.

It is a year since Ruth Smith won the Jersey Women’s Refuge Inspirational Woman of the Year Award, for her commitment to St Clement’s School in Malindi, Kenya over the last five years as well as her very own Malindi Brighter Futures Academy.

At the time she was raising money to realise her wish to roll out a lunch programme for the children, many who walk miles every day just to get to school.

Corbett Le Quesne and others helped her raise the £5,000 she needed. What the money did was enable the team to make it affordable for all parents at the school.

Since January all children have been receiving a modest lunch of beans and rice.

The lunch programme was an extension of Ruth’s ‘porridge programme’. When she arrived at the school for the first time in 2014, she wondered why the children were so lethargic just a few hours into the day. “They’ve had no breakfast", she was told, “and they will go home to no lunch and only get a small meal in the evening.”

And that was that, Ruth put an appeal out amongst her friends in Jersey, and within weeks the programme was on its feet, providing 165 children from very poor backgrounds with breakfast every day.

Ruth is now looking for sponsors for the 2020 programmes! If you’d like to contribute you can contact Ruth on ruthannsmith1950@icloud.com.