Utilization of Built Environment to Address Food Poverty in Public Schools in Mombasa County

Abstract

feeding programmes have played a vital role in facilitating meals for many pupils in public primary and pre-primary schools in Kenya since 1980. The role of schools in the society has evolved becoming multi-sectoral through integration of education, health and nutrition. The creation of numerous new feeding programmes has increased the delivery of meals to school going pupils. These programmes have however not been complemented with the optimization of the built environment to improve facilitation of school meals. The status of infrastructure in many public primary and pre-primary schools in Kenya is insufficient and poorly maintained. Crucial spaces like kitchens, dining areas, food stores and even kitchen gardens are inadequate. This therefore jeopardizes efficiency in meal delivery and it is important that these spaces be renovated to make them sufficient. The main objective of the research was to determine morphological and spatial design strategies that could be adopted in the built environment of public primary and pre-primary schools in Mombasa County to aid in effectively facilitating school feeding programmes hence addressing the issue of food poverty. The theoretical underpinning of the research were the theory of Change and the theory of Ecological Urbanism. The research assessed 41 schools in Mombasa County out of approximately 95 schools applying purposive sampling techniques. To mitigate the cost of facilitating school feeding programmes, it is crucial that local primary and pre-primary schools in Mombasa County implement autonomous strategies to reduce reliance on contributions from donors and the government and maximize on utility of the available limited resources. Some of these strategies include adoption of self-sufficient design techniques to ensure minimal wastage of resources and provision of low cost utilities such as electricity and water. This can be achieved through solar power, wind energy, biomass, rain water harvesting, drilling of boreholes, piping water from rivers and establishment of a water treatment plant. Schools can also build income generating structures such as lettable shops, lettable performance halls and even posho mills to generate revenue to finance the school feeding programmes. Schools should also promote farming through the establishment of not only kitchen gardens, but more gardens on any viable space. Planting of vegetables and cereals should be accompanied with keeping of livestock, poultry and practicing aquaponics. Integrated farming policies between local farmers and the schools is also important. Local farmers will aid in the implementation of the CBC system of education on matters related to farming and exchange ideas and resources with the schools. Schools play a vital role in society and if effectively optimized can become avenues for low lost cost quality meals facilitation offloading the society from the strenuous financial burden of proving meals to not only school going children but the society at large.