Ngara, TZ – Mukibogoye Primary School is using the new storage building – 15 May 2021

Mukibogoye Primary School has de-husked, sorted and bagged their corn harvest for the first time in their new storage building that was built last year. The school farm harvest, and parent contributions, of corn is stored in 44 very heavy 100 KG bags giving a total of 9,700 LBS / 4,400 KG of corn.

This is a great improvement to their education environment because in past years they used a classroom, which was a problem because understandably the local ministry of education forbids the storage of food in school classrooms when children are present. In addition to keeping the students in the classroom, the new storage building allows our local partner SODAT to train the local school staff and students in inventory management and forecasting best practices. The best practices include SODAT checking the inventory every two weeks, and then staging the next two weeks of corn for the daily breakfast. This is part of the step by step process of SODAT passing control of the Grow-own-Breakfast program to the school.

Mukibogoye’s sister schools, Kabalenzi and Mukirehe, currently do not have on-site storage facilities because there are no milling machines near them to mill and mix the corn and beans into porridge ingredients. Consequently, SODAT arranges for milling near a central storage unit where they store and then transport a milled corn and bean mix to the schools every two weeks for a cost of around US$550 per year. This means there is an opportunity to assist the Kabalenzi and Mukirehe schools to build a shared maize mill and storage building, which would benefit the schools and families in the area who have to travel up to two miles to mill their corn into flour.