According to ChildFund, there are around 3.5 million people in Kenya currently facing food insecurity, with children under five making up a third of that number.

(CNN) -- For young children in drought-stricken areas of Kenya, primary schools providing free lunchtime meals are operating as "life-saving centers" in communities where food is increasingly scarce.

But with schools due to close throughout August for the summer holidays, aid agencies warn this vital lifeline could be lost just when it is needed most.

"The situation is desperate," says Victor Koyi, National Director of the ChildFund aid agency in Kenya. "If schools close, children are put at ultimate risk, they are made vulnerable and the risk of death is, frankly, very real in those situations."

While the world's attention is drawn to southern Somalia -- where the United Nations has declared a famine -- the government of Kenya has declared its own state of emergency.

The drought has already forced the early closure of a number of primary schools in the region of Turkana -- considered the epicenter of the drought -- simply due to a lack of food.

Many more have been "teetering on the brink of closure, due to the lack of resources," said Koyi.

"The government released more funding for schools in the past few weeks, but the severe effect of the drought has caused a situation where there is insufficient supplies of food in the area," he said.

The Kenyan government currently funds three types of school feeding programs across the country, in collaboration with the U.N. World Food Program.

COMMENT: it is incredible hoe poor this people are and ow can they survive but they are generous and share there food each other in it doesnt matter if one person bought it or he found or somethink like that he share with his own kind and that are things that here in the city are nt common.