The Lunchbox Fund

The Lunchbox Fund is a non-profit organization that has fostered education via nutrition since 2005. The Fund is dedicated to providing a daily meal for orphaned and vulnerable school children in township and rural areas of South Africa. The organization was founded by South African model Topaz Page-Green.

The Board of Directors include Joaquin Phoenix, Rain Phoenix and Mario Batali. Salman Rushdie, Balthazar Getty, Francois Pienaar,Felicia Mabuza-Suttle and Hugh Masekela serve on the Advisory Board. A number of ambassadors and local volunteers work full- and part-time with the fund in South Africa.

Often their only guaranteed meal of a day, the meals are delivered at school. It encourages children to stay in school, attend more frequently, and obtain their education. When a child stays in school, his or her risk of HIV infection, abuse and unwanted pregnancies is greatly reduced. Twelve million South African children need feeding. The government feeding program reaches 8 million. The Lunchbox Fund's aim is to feed the rest.

The Lunchbox Fund identifies schools, or forms partnerships with locally based, in-community NGOs or community organizations in order to identify and evaluate schools. They then fund distributors or the Community Partner to buy and deliver food, monitor the feeding scheme, implement a Project Manager and deliver reports to the Fund. This allows for a sustained Lunchbox Fund community presence and constant ‘in situ’ evaluation. The Fund's principals pay quarterly site visits to all schools involved in the Feeding Program.

Community involvement and ownership is key to sustainable nonprofit interventions. Through recruiting local Gogos (grandmothers) and Mothers to prepare the food and paying them a stipend for their work – The Lunchbox Fund actively involves local women in the project. This creates an ‘on the ground’ monitoring network that enables community members to assist the school in identifying children at risk, in need of nutrition and those not attending school. The Fund works with community entrepreneurs to supply fresh fruit and bread, and to deliver these to the schools. Thus the Program becomes a ‘for the community by the community’ solution rather than an imposed, one-size fits all, imposed intervention. Quarterly on-site inspections by Lunchbox Fund personnel further ensure the local partners are fulfilling their brief accurately.

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