School Health and Nutrition Diet

TUMAINI HAND MISSIONS work closely with schools and their communities to ensure proper sanitation through building latrines, appropriate hand washing facilities, and providing access to safe drinking water whilst focusing on water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and health education. Most importantly, students are educated on how to improve their daily habits in health, nutrition, hygiene and prevention of HIV and AIDS, gaining these important skills and behaviors for life.

What Our Programs Do:

• Increase access to health and nutrition services including deworming, micronutrient supplementation, control of malaria, as well as vision and hearing screening at schools.

• Provide children increased access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in schools.

• Help children develop life-long health behaviors through skills-based health education, including HIV and AIDS prevention.

• Implement basic health-related school policies, support from individual schools and communities on a national level.

Our programs are unique and have been shown to improve not only children’s health and nutrition, but also their learning potential and life choices, both short and long-term. Our programs particularly benefit poor and disadvantaged children, who have the most to gain both nutritionally and educationally. Also, by focusing on the special needs for girls, for example through Menstrual Health Management (MHM), our programs help reduce barriers to educate girls and enhance their overall health.

It is now widely recognized that our programs are an important instrument in enabling children to benefit from quality education and reach their educational potential. As such, they are recognized as making a significant contribution towards our country, Kenya’s, efforts to achieve Education for All and 100% education transition on Big Four Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Within Tumaini Hand Missions, our programs work closely with the Education Programs to ensure that children in targeted communities served by Tumaini Hand Missions are well educated and healthy. Similarly, School Health and Nutrition Programs are a good continuation of Early Child Development (ECD) programs. Our School Health and Nutrition Programs are recognized as a global model and are in alignment with the UN and World Bank framework for school health and nutrition called FRESH (Focusing Resources on School Health and nutrition).