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Meal After School empowers Makhanda’s youth by tying education to nutrition

Meal After School empowers Makhanda’s youth by tying education to nutrition
Limise Gagayi, founder of NGO ‘Meal After School’ in Makhanda, in December. The house burnt down in April and her family lost everything, including the ability to feed the children that rely on her. (Photo: Vusumzi Fraser Tshekema)
Lillian Roberts
By Lillian Roberts
15 Jan 2025
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From food gardens to monitoring students’ grades, a biodigestor and meals after school, one family is investing in the future of children in Makhanda.

It was a hot day in mid-December. Dogs lazed on dirt roads and inside fenced gardens. Dust swirled in the distance of eThembeni — the outskirts of Makhanda in the Eastern Cape. Children dressed in impeccably white T-shirts trickled in to sit at a sparkly white table. 

“Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful,” called Limise Gagayi, the founder of the non-governmental organisation, Meal After School. She was busy checking the children’s report cards. Apparently, the children chose the theme of the lunch — a white Christmas. 

Santa sat next to the Christmas tree, while two women put the finishing touches on a three-course meal inside a hot kitchen. Festive music drifted out the mixed corrugated iron and brick house while the children patiently waited. It was time to celebrate the pass rate of the children and feed everyone for the last time, until the new year. 

How did Meal After School start? 


Gagayi moved from New Brighton in Gqerberha to Makhanda in 2020. Upon moving to her father-in-law’s house, she found the poverty in eThembeni particularly bad. 

“Most people aren’t working and depend on grants; there’s a lot of drinking and drugs. So we wanted to make a little contribution, and a little change.”

Her husband Madixole is a carpenter and upholstery designer, whose business was not going well in Makhanda when they first arrived. She was not working, and they were relying entirely on the rent money from the Gqerberha house. 

Gagayi’s mother had worked as a domestic worker for 30 years for the same family. The family, whom she considers her own, sent R800 to help during their financial struggles. Gagayi took R300 and spent it on a soup kitchen for the community. 

“What challenged me was there were some people that came to cater in that area, and they were only concentrating on older people, the kids were turned away. And I decided I would do the soup kitchen for the kids, from the R300.” 

She continued the soup kitchen for the children, serving hundreds. In the beginning, they didn’t have tutors to do homework with the children. In 2022, they decided to formalise the operations into Meal After School, focusing on serving different ages and improving educational outcomes. They feed 30 children consistently. 

One of the regular children who attend Meal After School to get one-on-one tutoring and a crucial meal after school in eThembeni, Makhanda, contemplates the moulded pasta and spinach with tuna starter, as part of the Christmas lunch. He is waiting for everyone to get a plate before eating. (Photo: Vusumzi Fraser Tshekema)



Gagayi checks each child's report card, which they have dutifully brought to her for the Christmas lunch and end-of-year celebration. (Photo: Vusumzi Fraser Tshekema)



Grades 8 to 12 are fed on Mondays and Wednesdays, and grades 2 to 6 are fed on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Local education NGO Gadra is also on board. Tutors like Bukho Gubevu help one on one, something that is impossible in a school environment. Gagayi checks the register every day for each child, and no child can be fed unless they are in school uniform, and have attended a full day of school. 

“Imagine you’ve got a 10-year-old child who is going to do Grade 2. There’s definitely a problem there. It’s better (here) because they get the attention they need, more than the classroom.” 

At the end of every term, the children bring along their report cards so Gagayi can check their results, as well as monitor their school absences. She’s unhappy when a child drops the smallest percentage.

“This is something we need to look at, because we need them to keep the pace. But I’m happy,” she said of the end-of-year marks.  

Good marks and gifts 


Every child got a duvet cover as a Christmas present, donated from Kingswood College. The incentives encouraged the  children, Gagayi said. 

“Giving them food, it boosts them a lot, because they know if they don’t go to school they know they are not allowed to come to Meal After School. They have to be in school uniform. Today it’s understandable, the schools are closed.” 

The top two children from each class got a second gift. 

“I’ve got regular people donating. Some of them don’t want to be mentioned, but I always mention them,” said Gagayi.  

A few regular donors came to the Christmas lunch — reluctant to make the programme about them — but willing to speak about the good work Gagayi does. 

“Limise does it out of her own goodwill, I appreciate what she’s doing for the kids. Kids have always been close to our heart, with MTR Smit Children’s Haven in Port Elizabeth, we’ve worked with them as well,” said a representative from Smhart Security. 

Gagayi continues to look for sponsors. 

“Because we’re growing. The tool we are looking for, that we don’t want to run out of, is food. They come here expecting food. When they are here, we help them with their education.”

Her four Grade 11 students passed the year. Her four Grade 12 students also did well, she said. They have applied to a few universities, and Gagayi calls them her “first years”, hopeful they will get into a tertiary education institution. 

Fresh food from the backyard 


Gagayi plucked spinach from the garden for the Christmas meal. 

Around the back of the house is a neatly fenced garden of a few metres, growing abundant spinach, cabbage, beetroot, tomatoes, cauliflower, and a little lemon tree. Lettuce usually grows too, but the gardener who usually helps weed needs to return in early 2025 for replanting, and to add pumpkin to the mix. 

“We really want to eat from our garden. It also helps the kids not to buy everything and to learn how to grow their own food. We’re dealing with the community as a whole. I’ve got five households,” Gagayi said, pointing towards surrounding houses with their own patches of flourishing produce. 

Each family grows vegetables for their own consumption, with the children helping out. 

They’re striving to create that lovely community set-up where if Gagayi doesn’t have a vegetable, she can ask a neighbour, and can then in turn provide something the neighbour does not have. 

Do the kids like their vegetables? 

Not really, said Gagayi, but she’s trying to incorporate vegetables wherever possible. For the Christmas lunch she received tuna from Kingswood College, and her daughter used the spinach from the garden to make a molded pasta starter, with carrot garnish. 

The night before lunch she made the salad. Her daughter, Portia Mzema, along with her friend Zukiswa Gowa, cooked chicken and rice for the main meal. Ice cream in cones was the dessert. 

Gugulethu Mahlangu, a young aquaponics farmer, moved to Makhanda and began outreach work to get to know the town, she said. She lent her expertise to Meal After School to start the gardens in the area. 

The one who conquers in hopeless situations  


“You put faeces and rubbish in it. Anything that nature provides. Ideally, it’s better if it’s mushed up,” said Helen Holleman, a donor, and organiser within River Rescue in Makhanda. She was talking about a biodigestor they have named Manqoba. 

There’s a yard for cows just across the street, so one just has to grab poop and pop it in, pointed out Holleman. It ferments with water to power Gagayi’s stove, using methane. A JoJo tank has been connected to Manqoba. 

In other parts, it’s known as the dragon, because you “feed it mush and they spit fire”, said Holleman. Gagayi renamed it to fit the locality. Manqoba means “the one who conquers in hopeless situations”.

They installed Manqoba in January 2024. Ideally, one would use a flow bin, but they couldn’t get one delivered in time. Children came to watch the installation, and were put to work to collect bottles or orange sacks, to help create a floating layer that creates more surface area for bacteria. Donated gravel was put at the very bottom of “the conqueror”. 

The septic tank cost about R5,000, whereas a flow bin would have been about R2,000. A flow bin is just a repurposed, very large plastic water container. If it hasn’t had chemicals in it, it can be used for methane conversion into usable energy. 

In a seemingly hopeless situation, smack bang in the middle of Covid-19, Gagayi refused to be conquered by despair, and is conquering what she can do in her corner of the world. DM 

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