In his first term in office, Mombasa Governor Hassan Joho faced massive challenges.
But one that perturbed him most was the rising number of learners dropping out of school in the county.
The Mombasa governor immediately commissioned a research to establish the cause and how to address the matter.
The county embarked on the project after a research by the department of Education showed that provision of milk to pupils and modern and well-equipped ECDEs could help keep children in class, improve their concentration and their overall performance.
With the findings, Mr Joho started building modern Early Childhood Development Education centres in the six sub-counties of Jomvu, Changamwe, Likoni, Kisauni, Nyali and Mvita.
Today the more than 10 modern disability friendly ECDE schools are fully equipped with modern materials and have attracted many learners.
Mr Joho said he had been strategising on how to retain the learners in schools and improve their nutrition levels. The state of the art classrooms was also one of the ways to address the challenge.
Thus, his administration was prompted to start offering free milk to retain the learners and entice others to join public schools.
The county uses Sh120 million every financial year to fund the programme where PP1 to Grade Three pupils in all the 97 public primary schools in Mombasa receive milk.
Governor Joho launched the free school milk programme dubbed Maziwa ya County 001 in 2014, and in 2015, learners started receiving a 200ml packet of milk daily.
Five years later his programme is a success with many county governments borrowing a leaf from his administration.
“The milk programme which began in 2015, has seen an increase in beneficiaries from 26,700 pupils to 32,000 in 97 public primary schools. Learners benefit from a 200ml packet of milk every school day,” said Mr Joho.
The learners get the free milk from Monday to Friday.
“Many pupils from poor families in slums could either not go to school or dropped out from the learning institutions due to poverty but, today, many come to school for a packet of milk; this has been a success,” Amani Primary School teacher Amakobe Nanjira says.
Sub-county administrators have been coordinating the distribution of the milk as they urge parents to take advantage of the county infrastructure to enrol their children in school.
“Given more resources, we will consider including learners in private schools because they are our children,” Mombasa County Director of Communications Richard Chacha said.
Mr Chacha was responding to cries from parents and teachers from private schools who have been urging Governor Joho to include their children in the programme.
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