Wawira Njiru

What do you see when you picture world hunger?

A skinny, starving kid in Africa, an aid worker swooping in to save the day, a grain sack stumped with a flag of a distant nation.

Now, picture something else.

A farmer harvesting fresh crops, securing the knowledge that they will feed local schoolchildren instead of disappearing at a throwaway price to a volatile market.

Bustling kitchens across Kenya serving thousands of meals daily, powered by clean energy and run by local women.

a mother contributing to her child's lunch with a tap of a wristband.

Now, the world has long treated hunger as a crisis that Africa suffers and the West solves.

But what if Africa had the blueprints to feeding the future?

I was raised in a home where generosity was a way of life.

My parents were healthcare workers and church leaders, and that meant they were always willing to help, even when we didn't have much ourselves.

I'll tell you a story.

My dad once sold our TV, the only TV we had, to help someone who needed the money.

It sounds so altruistic now, but as a kid, I was really pissed at that.

And I'm kind of still pissed at it.

Our home was never really just ours.

There was always someone staying with us, someone who needed a meal, someone who they just could not turn away.

But that spirit shaped me.

When I started a school lunch program, I was not trying to end world hunger.

I was a 21-year-old university student trying to help kids in my community of Reru, a town that's outside Nairobi, the capital of Kenya.

Back where I grew up, kids in my neighborhood did not end up like me.