Nkosizwile begins each day on an empty stomach. His first food is the porridge served at 10.30am in the school break. Sometimes it is the only meal he'll eat all day.

However, despite the hardship, he dreams of being a pilot, plays for the school football team and has found friends like Lecious Nyoni, 13, a bright, talkative boy who loves maths and hopes to become a lawyer.

Lecious said: "Because of Mary's Meals we enjoy coming to school. Before, many children stayed home because they had nothing to eat. Some would faint in class.

"Now we are happy to come and the classrooms feel friendlier because we all know we'll have something to eat at break time."

The daily porridge, cooked over open fires in large pots behind the school, not only fills empty stomachs but is encouraging education and strengthening the community's resilience.

Amid their own struggles, parents and guardians volunteer to fetch firewood and water. Others

prepare and serve the meals.

The drought, worsened by repeated climate shocks since 2021, has devastated subsistence farming - once the community's main source of income. Many men have turned to small-scale gold mining, often working in unsafe, exploitative conditions.

Lungisani Nyathi, 39, who

volunteers as a security guard for the village borehole, lives with his wife and children aged four, 10, 12, and 10 months in a makeshift shelter near the pump.

The role is unpaid, but it offers Lungisani a small plot of land to live on and he sees the school feeding programme as a blessing.

He said: "It motivates the

children to attend school. It's reduced my burden, because often the only other meal they get is in the evening.

"As a father, it's difficult not being able to provide. I used to work in a registered mine but the pay was inconsistent.

"If you don't find gold, you don't earn anything. The conditions are harsh. The mine owner takes most of what you find. Once I earned $100, but the next two times, I got nothing. I stopped."

He worries deeply for his son's future, saying: "If things don't change, he may have no option but to go into mining too.

A bowl of porridge is transforming communities in Zimbabwe