Dzikwa Trust is providing daily hot meals for its children from Monday to Saturday. The kitchen/dining hall building was funded by a Finnish development cooperation grant in 2010. The meal consists of sadza (thick maize meal porridge) and vegetables, supplemented with meat, fish, or beans. For many of the children, this may be their only decent meal of the day. Five mothers from the community with children in the Dzikwa Trust programme work as cooks. Most of the vegetables, as well as chicken and rabbit meat, are provided by the Dzikwa Trust Food Security programme. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dzikwa Trust started serving a takeaway meal and extended the service to a large number of needy community children. In 2020-2021, Dzikwa Kitchen offered on average 850 hot meals/ day under its emergency feeding scheme. The record year was 2021, with a total of 230,000 meals served. In normal circumstances, the daily numbers average around 350 and the monthly numbers between 8,000 – 9,000 meals.

Dzikwa Kitchen is open from Monday to Saturday. Meals are being served between 10 am to 2.30 pm and children come to eat either before going to school or after school. Dzikwa Kitchen records everyone coming to eat school by school.

Supplies are procured in bulk monthly, with vegetables and most of the meat coming from Dzikwa Trust’s own food production. The average cost/ meal is USD 0.62.

Dzikwa Kitchen also continuously feeds 80 – 100 needy children who are not in the education support programme, from nearby poor families. This is our way of supporting the community at large within our means.