About · Where we work

MSLI reaches the children who need it most.

There is no school too small or too remote. We go where the children are.

Interactive map

Every dot is a school where children eat every day.

Our headquarters are in Chókwè, Gaza Province, in southern Mozambique. Our feeding program currently (2026) reaches 254 schools, serving 30,000+ students with nutritious meals every day.

Each dot on the map is the location of one of the schools we serve. Bigger dots correspond to bigger schools. Schools often cluster around rivers, as this is where communities get their water. Click on a dot to see the school name and number of students (as of 2026 enrollment).

students.: 30,000+
schools.: 254
districts.: 6

Legend

Gaza Province boundary
School served by MSLI
MSLI headquarters, Chókwè

Boundaries: ; districts: (CC BY 3.0 IGO). Schools and 2026 enrollment: MSLI.

Why these districts

We work where food insecurity is highest.

We go to the districts where children face the highest risk of hunger, and plan our growth around the places that still have no school meals.

We look for rural schools with high food insecurity and little or no existing school feeding.

The map shows Mozambique; the outlined region is Gaza Province, where MSLI works. Source: , February–May 2026 projected outcomes, with its zone boundaries; neighboring countries from .

Projected food insecurity where we serve

IPC Phase 1Minimal
IPC Phase 2Stressed
IPC Phase 3Crisis
IPC Phase 4Emergency
IPC Phase 5Famine

Projected outcomes for February–May 2026. Source: .

Our coverage by district

Share of each district's primary schools that we serve.

Chókwè22%23 schools
Mabalane95%61 schools
Mapai94%47 schools
Chigubo100%54 schools
Chicualacuala72%38 schools
Massangena100%31 schools

What this means in practice

What are the communities like?

These are dry, rural communities. Most families live from subsistence farming, and many also herd animals and make charcoal to get by. Many villages have transport only once a week, on market day.

Two large leafless trees on bare, dry sandy ground, with mud-and-thatch homesteads and a tarpaulin shelter behind — A village in the dry season.

A woman in a green blouse carries a large bundle of harvested bean plants on her head across a dug field, with other women harvesting behind her — Livelihoods here depend largely on small-scale farming, which is seasonal and reliant on rainfall.

Three stacks of white sacks packed with charcoal lean against a tree trunk at the edge of a dry, sandy field — Families produce and sell charcoal to buy food during the lean season.

A woman with a bucket on her head and a baby on her back walks down a sandy track through dry bush, holding a small child's hand, with three more children ahead — Children often accompany parents to go to the farm.

“Em algumas comunidades os pais das crianças passam todo dia na machamba a proteger o milho dos animais e os filhos atrasam na escola... com a refeição na escola elas não precisarão de fazer estas distâncias de machamba para escola.”
“In some communities, parents spend the whole day at the farm guarding the maize from animals, and their children arrive late to school, but with a meal at school, they won't need to make that trip anymore.”
— community member, Chókwè district

Community profiles

Learn about a few of our communities.

Chókwè District
Bombôfo
- 567 students
We added Bombôfo Primary School to the feeding program in 2017, and since then it has grown to include a community preschool and a school bus as part of the Avança+ program. We use the primary school kitchen to feed all students – 330 in primary school, 119 in preschool, and 118 in secondary school (who take our school bus every day to Ngungunhane Secondary School).
Mabalane District
Tsocate
- 309 students
Tsocate Primary School joined our school feeding program in 2024. The following year, teachers saw that several children who had previously dropped out of school in the 3rd, 4th and 5th grades, were re-enrolling in school. These are often the most vulnerable kids, who struggled to learn on an empty stomach. But with a big meal at school each day, they now have the energy to study again.
Mapai District
Lissenga
- 111 students
Lissenga Primary School was added to our school feeding program in 2026. In this community, the school feeding program is the only reliable safety net that children, and their families, can count on. Schools in our program record average attendance rates above 95%, largely due to the incentive of the school meals.

Getting there

For us, there is no such thing as too remote.

Reaching these schools means traveling long distances on dirt roads that wind through the savannah. Many villages are on both sides of the river, but there are no bridges, and so the team has to cross in small rowboats to get to the schools on the other side.