Piggery for Katakyiase

Two Pennies Ministry has had a presence in the village of Katakyiase for six years.  We've sent teams of teachers to do professional development with their teachers. School children from several schools have exchanged penpal letters with students there and we have sent computers and books to be used by the school. In our discussions with the students and teachers, we discovered one of the major challenges that the school faced revolved around the issue of diet.  Most of the children would come to school hungry every day and they would have nothing to eat until the evening when they went home.  Sycamore Trails Elementary (Bartlett, IL), Southbury Elementary (Oswego, IL), and First Baptist church all contributed to begin providing meals for children at the school.  Our representative, Aboagye Prah, who is also headmaster at the school, hired workers to purchase, prepare, and serve the food to the students every day.  Hundreds of hungry school children were fed daily through this initiative. The problem with the approach was that there was no end in sight.  How could a program like this translate into something that would allow the school to continue feeding students but not be reliant on the people in the United States for constant support? After talking with the teachers at the school, they came up with the idea of building and maintaining a piggery.  By raising pigs for sale, they would be able to use the revenue to feed the children at the school. The raising of the funds for this project came from three different sources.  The first two were Vacation Bible Schools - Chilson Hills Church in Michigan and First Baptist in Elgin.  They were also joined by the entire congregation at First Baptist Church of Elgin to raise the full funds.  By Spring of 2017, the piggery has been built and the first 3 sows were brought in. Since the building of the piggery, over 30 pigs have been raised and sold, bringing in funds for the school.  Inspired by the results of the lunch program, the government actually stepped in to fund the school lunches, allowing the school to use the funds for other purposes. This was truly a group effort.  Many of the students and teachers spent time caring for and feeding the pigs and members of the community saved scraps to be able to feed them.