Wawira Njiru

Meet Wawira Njiru. In 2012, after returning home to Kenya from her overseas studies in Australia, she started feeding schoolchildren. A few years earlier, the government had made primary education free, but the schools had been unprepared for the influx - overnight, 1.3 million children entered the system. Many kids weren't getting a proper meal, and the lack of decent nutrition meant they were dropping out, making high school and university more unlikely.

Wawira decided to do something. She started small, using her own savings and some donations from friends. A local church let her set up a kitchen five minutes away from a school, so children could come during lunch time. 25 were identified, and she found some local volunteers to help with the cooking. Within a few months, they were feeding hundreds, and within a few years, thousands. Her organization Food for Education, is now capable of feeding 30,000 children per day.

Every week day, the kitchen loads up a truck with vats of cooked rice, beans, grains, legumes, and vegetables, which makes the rounds to different partnering schools to deliver lunch. The kids pay 15 cents each - a heavily subsidised amount - to get a nutritious bowl of food that accounts for 40% of their daily nutrients. Wawira and her team have delivered over a million meals since she first started out.

“This is not something that’s nice to do,” she says. “It’s necessary to do.”