Understand the role of School Breakfast Clubs on community building

The World Health organisation and Kellanova want to understand how School Breakfast Clubs can help build communities among children/students who attend them.

Question

Kellanova and the World Health Organisation watned to understand the following objectives:

  • Explore how SBCs help develop a sense of community among students and the school's staff. 

  • Understand how SBCs influence the classroom/playground and overall school experience. 

  • Identify the social benefits and limitations of SBCs.

Solution

To capture children's viewpoint a mix of ethnographies in schools and diary studies carried out by students' parents were deemed the most appropriate.

To build on the previous study conducted by Rare: Group for Kellanova, the research was carried out in the United Kingdom (UK), the United States of America (US), Brazil, India and South Africa, providing insight into cultural differences, if any.

Result

School Breakfast Programme’s foster a sense of community among attendees providing several benefits. Children attending School Breakfast Programmes form deeper bonds with their peers, and are exposed to more social networking opportunities with children of other grades. Through cross-grade interaction, children adopt caring and nurturing behaviours with peers. This community building experience therefore has a positive impact on the learning environment.

Impact

Being the follow up of a previous project with a similar aim helped to validate the previous findings, and thanks to the the in-depth qualitative methodology to explore behaviours and social relationships of those involved in the breakfast providing the client with fundamental insights that informed their campaigns and educational material published on their website. The research was nominated for the Reuters Responsible Business Award 2023.