What started as a promise of one banana per student has grown into a global mission. THRIVE now serves more than 3,000 daily meals to children in Bangladesh and the Philippines.
DETROIT (WXYZ) — A Michigan-based nonprofit that started by giving bananas to school children in Bangladesh is now providing thousands of daily meals to kids halfway across the globe.
THRIVE, co-founded by Gina Gabel in 2012, serves more than 3,000 daily meals to children in need across 17 different schools in Bangladesh and the Philippines.
“These kids are not eating regular food on a daily basis. There are endless hungry children in the world. We knew we had to do something about it,” Gabel said.
Gabel, who was recently featured on Inc.’s FemaleFounder 500 list, said her mission to feed the hungry began nearly 15 years ago.
“We started with a promise of one banana to a school of 250 kids,” Gabel said.
The food is directly impacting school attendance and enrollment rates.”
A lot of families will keep their kids home from school to work and make money for the family. But when a school meal is provided or promised, kids show up to school,” Gabel said. “When we started, we were just acting out of a gut reaction as moms.”
The nonprofit goes beyond helping the hungry by purchasing locally sourced food from farmers and employing 19 mothers to cook the school meals.
“But, employing moms — for many, this is their first ever stable work and with the advent of that… we’re really changing communities,” Gabel said.
The impact is clear to Gabel, who holds the joy of the children and mothers near and dear.
“I’ve learned what resilience, gratitude, and joy look like. All they really want is their child to be healthy and be educated, and a school meal can make a huge dent in that,” Gabel said.
While feeding 3,000 children is good progress, Gabel said it is still not enough. She hopes to reach 10,000 children by the end of 2028.
