Catering Academy provide vital lifeline for African School children

IN recent months all eyes have fallen firmly on Africa, but not to focus on the severity of poverty that plagues the majority of the continent, instead to concentrate on the grandeur of the World Cup football celebrations.
The coverage has gone further though than just the game and positioned the African people as a proud and welcoming nation who turn adversity into opportunity at every occasion.

It was well before the recent World Cup that Warrington independent contract catering
company, Catering Academy, who secured 10th position in this year’s Sunday Times Fast Track 100 list, started to champion various initiatives in direct response to their dedicated affiliations to local, national and international communities.
Having already pledged their support to greatly successful African water project, One Water, the latest scheme the company have recently undertaken is by far their largest and most progressive to date.
Catering Academy is sponsoring the NEMA Foundation’s School Feeding Project; an initiative to provide school children in Mozambique with a nutritious school meal each and every day. Malnutrition has a firm grip on the inhabitants of
Mozambique with over 63% of the population undernourished. A staggering one in five children in Mozambique, under the age of five, is severely nutritionally deprived.
Catering Academy will supply 180 school meals each day at the Runho School, providing each child with 75% of their RDA of nutrients. Compared to the 12,000 school dinners provided daily within their national catering contracts business in the UK
this would seem a simple task but the logistics, politics and hostile working conditions in which the Mozambique initiative is effected by is making the task just as challenging.

One of the key underlying reasons Catering Academy are backing the project is to support
nutrition and diet, recognising the importance for each individual to fulfil their potential and be the best they can be. Another incentive for Catering Academy was to get more children into education. Before the programme started less than 20% of children completed all 7 years at primary
school and less than 1% of children went on to study at secondary school. Currently children help gather food for their families during the day and the prohibitive cost of secondary school education is a major hurdle most families find impossible to comprehend.
But now with the support of Team Academy, children in Mozambique can now receive an education, a healthier lifestyle and a brighter future. Catering Academy are investing profits from the company into this extremely worthwhile cause, and will also be looking at on site initiatives within their schools to
raise awareness of the project. Founder Director of Catering Academy, Louise Wymer said:

“We have always been consciously aware of our corporate responsibility, even with effects of the recession magnifying issues within the UK industry sectors.
"It is so important that companies in our industry show their support for projects that offer recipients a better quality of life, and we are extremely proud to be part of such a worthy initiative."
Catering Academy became involved with the project after Louise Wymer met JoJo Maman Bebe’s Founder and MD, Laura Tenison at this year’s Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year awards.

After talking over the opportunities of how they could
support each other and work together on some corporate responsibility initiatives, Laura introduced Louise to the NEMA project of which she herself is a trustee.

Laura Tenison had this comment:
"We were delighted that Catering Academy agreed to fund our school feeding project. It is remarkable what a difference one good meal a day can make to these adorable, beautiful but very poor children."
For more information about Catering Academy and their fair-trade ethos please visit the website, www.catering-academy.co.uk or to find out more about the project, www.nemafoundation.org