KickStart Breakfast

As KickStart Breakfast clocks up six months since launching, the programme is now working with close to 300 schools and their breakfast clubs across New Zealand. Strathmore School in Tokoroa has been on board with the programme since term two on this year (2009).

Strathmore breakfast club co-ordinator, Miss Ifi Hasini viewed the opportunity to get the KickStart Breakfast programme happening in their school earlier this year as extremely good timing. “Teachers were concerned at the alarming number of children not eating breakfast in the morning. Some children viewed a meat pie or a mixed bag of lollies as breakfast.”

Ifi says a wonderful person suggested that the school join up after reading an article in a farming magazine about the KickStart programme. Enquiries were made by the school principal and voila, the Strathmore Breakfast club was established. After running the breakfast club for a term, the numbers of students coming early for breakfast is continuing to increase, and the benefits of learning and eating healthy are starting to show in the way kids think
about food.

“In our last breakfast club of term two, we saw the opportunity to show children
the different ways to ‘eat’ Weet-Bix,” Ifi says. “The children were stunned at how
delicious and easy it was to make Weet-Bix  smoothies.”

The school is rapt with the opportunity Fonterra and Sanitarium have provided to pass the healthy eating message to the children. Strathmore School runs their breakfast club on Mondays and Wednesdays with around 35 students attending each morning.