Effect of Health and Nutrition On the Performance of Pre-Primary School Children in Vol Division, Vol District, Kenya

Chapter One Early childhood education aims at helping the child to grow and develop physically, mentally, emotionally, socially and spiritually. These have to be seriously looked into for the objectives of early childhood to be achieved. Early childhood learners are full of wealthy ideas and experiences already learnt at home and therefore should be given a conducive environment at the ECE centres. From time immemorial, it has been realized that balance diet has been an issue. For that matter, the Europeans saw into that Africans were indeed suffering as far as balance diet is concerned. Africa being a rich agricultural land, the Europeans introduced some foreign crops such as maize, sorghum, soya beans, and others. They also introduced various animal breeds and made them to suit the climate through cross breeding as this could provide both beef and milk to the locals as a cheap source of food with high nutritive value. The Kenyan government in 1978 introduced school milk to all primary schools. Some arid and semi-arid areas like West Pokot are also provided with food programme. This issue has opted the researcher to carry out research in Voi Division, Voi District in Coastal Province. The area consists of small scale peasant farmers. Farmers are discouraged from large scale and cash crop farming due to poor transport network, lack of industries for their produce and delayed payments by the industries that purchase their produce. Most of the people in this area live below poverty line. The peasant farmers grow millet, beans, and maize as food crops, they also grow sugar cane, tobacco as cash crops. The staple foods therefore are "ugali" and vegetables. Although the people living there are known to be fish eaters which are a rich source of protein, it has been very difficult for people of this area to make it a usual meal due to transport as it has been said that the roads are poor and fish is perishable and there is no proper storage facilities. As a result ofthis, most early childhood development centers', children are malnourished as they show early childhood diseases and poor performance in growth and development. Therefore, a need to enlighten the community, Parents and care givers on importance of health and nutrition on growth and development and performance of the children at early stage.