‘The Bread Loaf’ by AbdulRahman Alnazeer. Retrieved from okayafrica.com

What is Bread for Education?

Founded in 2013 by Jordanian social entrepreneur Abdul Rahman Zghoul, Bread for Education takes bread leftovers from hotels, restaurants and schools, and turns it into healthy feed for livestock sold to farmers and traders. To create social impact, the organisation channels revenue from this model into financing scholarships, school supplies and educational opportunities to underprivileged youth and refugees.

Previously, the collection of bread was dependent on a small group of volunteers, something that has posed sustainability and scalability implications. Through the Social Innovation Incubator: Holoul 2030, Bread for Education has innovated a new way to incentivise the local communities of Zarqa and Russeifeh in playing a role in Food Waste Management, an issue that had created a burden on the local municipality and resulted in environmental epidemics.

The team innovated a new community mobilisation and partnership-building model to involve the local communities of Zarqa and Russeifeh in their mission. The model capitalised on community members as agents of a structured and well managed network of bread collectors; namely the “Bread for Education Network of Ambassadors”. Community engagement in food waste collection resulted in a 300% increase in revenue from selling animal feed production. Now covering the whole Governorate, the network boasts 48 local partnerships, and has also doubled the number of beneficiaries annually.

To date, Bread for Education trained 17,500+ students in recycling, collected more than 10,000+ tons of bread scraps, and provided 1,200+ scholarships to students in Jordan as well as refugees. It also allocated 1,200+ boxes to collect the remains of bread, offering job opportunities for young people.

Impact in Numbers:

“The training and mentorship we received during the Social Innovation Camp and in incubation were very relevant and useful. They helped us better-design our model of operations with our volunteers and community assets in mind. We were pushed to our limits as a team but I do believe we prevailed. We are proud of our achievements now; all thanks to Tech Tribes and the support we received from MEPI”. Marwan Smadi- Bread for Education.