|PIC2| In the rural area outside Bulawayo, just outside the national park of Matobo where the grave of Cecil John Rhodes is sited, Aids Care Education and Training (ACET) run one of their feeding programmes for children.

BMS World Mission personnel Gill and Kevin Jones are based in South Africa but are making trips into neighbouring Zimbabwe to assess how to establish development and Aids work there. Gill takes up the story of this particular feeding programme:

ACET has been involved here for several years, and they supply a porridge every school day to over 2,000 children. In this school they are feeding 547 children every day. They are aided by a group of over 100 volunteers who work in teams of six to cook and distribute this porridge. They feed all the children in the school, not just those ones affected by HIV or Aids, or from child-headed households. This has been a difficult task over the last year or so, involving driving into Botswana every two weeks to buy the food that is needed, as it has not been available in Zimbabwe.

The food is guarded each night by some of the male volunteers as it is stored in one of the rooms at the school. It is prepared each day in a small 'lapa' some distance from the school in a large oil drum over a wood fire - being stirred by a large stick. It is then poured into large buckets to be distributed to the children. The porridge is made from maize flour and either oil, or peanut butter.

For many of the children, this meal at 10.00am each day is their first of the day - often after having walked nine kilometres to get to the school.

The youngest children are fed first, whilst the others all patiently line up to receive the food. Many of the children will have lost their bowls, and they wait until some of the others have finished before being able to use their bowls in turn. Some of the children share bowls. The volunteers wash each bowl before use and give each child a plastic spoon to use - collecting these back at the end.

This food has meant that the children are able to concentrate at school, and improve their education. The teachers have noticed the difference that it has made to the ability of the children, and the deputy headmaster praised the work that ACET have been doing. "Without this, some of these children would not be here today," he said.

Re-printed in Christian Today with the kind permission of BMS World Mission www.bmsworldmission.org