Mary is a 16-year-old girl in our school program with a learning disability and a delay in milestones. When Mary was first enrolled in our school, she went through our assessment process to evaluate her physical, learning, and nutrition needs.
Upon her nutrition assessment, Mary was severely underweight, coming in over three times below the average weight of her peers the same age. We also discovered that Mary's household was at high risk for food insecurity. Her household comprises five members, with her single mother being the sole provider and an income level well below the poverty line.
Mary's food insecurity was also easily noted at meal times when she would devour her food without breaks while staring at other students' plates.
On enrollment, Mary weighed 70 pounds (32.0 kg), roughly the average weight of a 10-year-old American girl. The Ubuntu Life Foundation school lunch program intervened by increasing her portion sizes at lunch since the frequency of her meals could not be factored in. Just a few short months later, Mary's weight has improved to 76.5 lbs (34.7 kg) and continues to climb. Mary can now enjoy her food to satisfaction without worrying the other students about their food.
Our school lunch program is also in the works of getting a commercial-grade blender to better enrich our student's diets with foods like locally made peanut butter paste. Once the blender is here, we will use the peanut butter paste to complement students' midmorning snacks, Mary's lunch meal, and ten other students in the school program who are severely underweight.
