January isn’t when most of us think about starting a new school year. But for kids in Kenya, it marks the start of the first trimester of the 2019 academic year.

It also marks the return of the Kenya Kids Can food truck—a food truck unlike the ones we frequent over the lunch hour here at home.

Our food truck has one item on the menu.

Githeri. It’s a blend of maize and beans simmered for four hours and served hot.

The githeri is served only one time per day, catering exclusively to the lunch crowd. And for some of our 16,000 students, this Kenyan staple will be the only meal they eat that day.

Our food truck operators aren’t chefs.

Another unusual aspect of this food truck is that the operators don’t prepare the food. Instead, they are dedicated to delivering the hulking, 200-pound bags of maize and beans to each of our 30 schools, placing the bags in school storerooms a total of six times per year. The actual cooking of daily lunches is up to teachers, parents, and the community.

Our food truck patrons do the heavy lifting.

They provide cooking pots, gather wood to fuel each day’s fire, collect water for boiling, recruit capable cooks, supply ladles for scooping precise portions, and rally young diners who bring their own bowls.

Our food truck doesn’t take shortcuts.

Some would call our food truck transportation model a challenge. Kenyan delivery routes include ankle-deep mud on undeveloped roads, often stranding our truck in the valley for hours.

But with shovels and ropes and fuel from your support, we excavate the truck, reroute, and arrive right on time to start the new school year.

Our food truck delivers on your generosity.

Like us, you know the food truck’s arrival is met with robust enthusiasm because it enables our students to remain in school all day. A secure lunch means kids spend their afternoons in class instead of leaving to search out food.

It means eager minds are nourished with wholesome meals and academic instruction that make grades climb and absenteeism plummet.

Kids will run longer and jump higher in athletics—and life—because the truck comes with food you supply.

You delivered three million meals last school year.

Our version of the food truck, along with your prayer and financial support, supplied school children in the Rift Valley with an invaluable serving of love, health, and assurance that people like you care about them.

As we go back to school in 2019, we are nourished by the knowledge that Kenya Kids Can, because of you.