Nandi County has rolled out a school milk feeding programme that will provide milk to Early Childhood Development Education (ECDE) learners every week across all 30 wards, targeting close to 800 public ECDE centres.
The county government says the programme is intended to tackle malnutrition among young children while improving school attendance, concentration in class and enrolment in pre-primary schools.
Governor Stephen Sang speaking during the launch of the programme early this week, said the county had moved to full implementation after a pilot programme in Tinderet and Kabiyet wards produced a significant increase in enrolment.
“In Tinderet, some of the schools have registered a 100 per cent increase in terms of children coming to our schools. That is double the number,” Sang said.
He said Kabiyet Ward similarly recorded an increase in enrolment, with children from neighbouring wards where the milk programme was not running moving to schools within the pilot area.
The Governor said the results had demonstrated the potential of a regular school milk supply to improve both access to early learning and children’s welfare.
The programme will now be extended to ECDE learners throughout Nandi, with milk supplied weekly throughout the year.
Sang said the intervention was particularly important because county research had established that levels of malnutrition among children remained unacceptably high.
“This is an investment in the health, nutrition, attendance and concentration of our children in class,” he said.
The county government has opted to source the milk locally rather than purchase processed milk from outside Nandi.
Through the Nandi County Cooperative Union (NDCU), milk will be sourced from local farmers, processed within the county and supplied to ECDE centres.
Sang revealed that the arrangement was intended to create a direct link between Nandi’s dairy farmers and the county’s youngest consumers.
He said the county could have obtained milk from processors in other counties but deliberately chose a local supply chain to increase returns to farmers and retain economic benefits within Nandi.
“Our parents and farmers in Nandi County give us milk, we process the same milk, and then we give it to our children as the first customers of our own milk,” he said.
Governor Sang insisted that the initiative therefore goes beyond school feeding, creating a value chain that links dairy production, processing, employment and child nutrition.
The programme will see locally produced milk move from farmers through the county’s processing system before reaching ECDE classrooms.
He said the county would monitor the programme as it expands and explore additional interventions to improve the welfare and nutrition of ECDE learners.
The milk rollout is part of wider investments in early childhood education in Nandi.
According to Sang, the county was also preparing to introduce an ECDE school uniform programme, with uniforms to be produced locally through the Nandi Textile facility (NUTEX) and selected vocational training centres.
The interventions are aimed at ensuring that children not only have access to ECDE but also receive the nutrition, learning environment and dignity required to benefit from early childhood education.
For the milk programme, however, the county’s immediate target is clear: take a regular supply of locally sourced and processed milk to ECDE learners in all 30 wards, throughout the year, while using the programme to improve nutrition, attendance and enrolment.
