Lunchbox Fund

LBF recognises that children cannot be educated or grow with insufficient nutritional intake. Our Nutrition Programme is arranged around our primary goal which is to uphold a child's right to a basic education. No child should be kept from learning by hunger or household food insecurity. LBF provides a daily hot school meal of nutritionally fortified foods to impoverished and at risk children attending early childhood development centres (ECDCs), Educational Playgroups, primary and secondary schools in South Africa, and after-school homework and skills development programs.

We aim to facilitate children's education through offering a behavioural incentive for children to attend and stay in schools and creches, and through helping them to concentrate and learn while there. These are important steps for children in reaching their full potential as adults and in breaking the intergenerational cycles of poverty and vulnerability.

The Lunchbox Fund provides a monthly rotating menu of nutritionally fortified meals for children in township schools and Early Childhood Development Centers across all 9 provinces of South Africa. It costs 25¢ for one meal that includes a full RDA of macro- and micronutrients, vitamins, and minerals. The school is also required to source locally grown vegetables from within the community. We provide each school with one month's worth of food at a time, and the local women we employ ensure that the food is prepared and served properly.

We currently serve children across all 9 provinces of South Africa. Every school day, we provide nearly 32,000 children with hot meals. Every school has a clean facility for preparing and serving the food. The Lunchbox Fund is a registered Non-Profit Organisation in South Africa and in the United States. A Board of Directors in both countries guides the organisation's mission, purpose and management.

LBF beneficiaries are vulnerable and food insecure children in South Africa. LBF South Africa is staffed by a Managing Director, a Program Monitoring Manager, and a Director of Programs. Independently contracted Fieldworks and Cooks ('Food Mamas') are essential to our Monitoring and Nutrition Programmes respectively. Fieldworkers are located provincially in all nine provinces of South Africa, and in schools of more than 80 children stipended Food Mamas are drawn from the local community.

Our United States entity is primarily focussed on fundraising, global policy and strategy, and our outward facing communications (such as our website and social media). Our Founding CEO is based in the United States, as well as our Project Manager.

The Lunchbox Fund's staffing structure allows us to outsource additional capacity on a needs-only and deliverable basis to carefully selected, highly qualified partners - such our food supply and delivery company in South Africa, legal services, and independent auditors. In this way, we ensure we reduce our overhead costs and minimise financial risk.

We are on track with our projections. We became a fully national organisation in 2015, and increased the number of children we serve to 30,000. In 2021, the Lunchbox Fund reached 31,033 children with over five million meals. Our Covid Relief program delivered more than 2 million meals to over 70,000 family members throughout South Africa. Our next goal is to serve 35,000 children a hot meal each school day by December 2022.