Late last year Nourish Lao Children donated the funds to build a kitchen on the Thachok Village school grounds. Kitchen supplies were delivered earlier this year. Give Children A Choice provided the furniture for the kitchen and coordinated the construction. Thachok Village is in Pek District, Xieng Khouang Province. Give Children A Choice built a three room preschool with two bathrooms there in 2009 and has returned many times since.
Give Children A Choice was excited to help Nourish Lao Children (NLC) build this kitchen to provide free lunches for the children. It is a perfect example of empowering the villagers and teachers to help them help their children. The kitchen help address two issues. (1) Chronic malnutrition plagues over 35% of Lao children, particularly, in the remote villages. In this village, the children go home for lunch, often not eating a healthy lunch because their parents are away in the rice field for the day or week. (2) Unattended children go home for lunch and don’t return to school for afternoon session. The NLC kitchen empowers the villagers/teachers to provide better nutrition and improves school attendance (and longer term improves primary school performance and graduation percentages). As well, the villagers built the kitchen. NLC provided the funding for construction supplies and kitchen supplies. Thank you NLC. Hoping to partner with you again.