Egypt’s “School Meals Programme” Encourages Student Attendance and Enrollment

FruitsThe UN World Food Programme (WFP) will work together with Vodafone Egypt Foundation to provide food support to Egyptian school children and their families. With $1 million worth of funding, this program will help to feed 75,000 people by providing students with in-school snacks and take-home rations. It will also fund nutritional training for 300 school teachers.

The School Meals Programme will target nearly 900 schools in remote and impoverished areas of Egypt. Providing students with healthy snacks during the school day will help to reduce hunger and improve student concentration and performance in classes.

According to GianPietro Bordignon, the WFP Egypt Representative and Country Director, “improving the nutritional status of school-aged children is key to helping children realise their full future potential; a child cannot focus in class while hungry, and many of the children in the schools we work in say the morning snack they receive is sometimes the first thing they eat on any given day.”

Additionally, children whose attendance rate is 80% or more will receive 10 kg of rice monthly, the equivalent of 20% of an average family’s food expenditure. The promise of take-home rations can help reduce child labor by providing parents with an incentive to enroll their children in school and keep them there.

“This project…helps underprivileged communities get out of the vicious circle of illiteracy and poverty through promoting education and providing food-based assistance to families who spend most of their income on food…[it] combats child labour, helps reduce school dropout rates and also provides families with a much-needed income injection in the form of direct food assistance” stated Mohamed Henna, the Chairman of Vodafone Egypt Foundation.

By helping to feed school-aged children, this program seeks to reduce the burden impoverished Egyptian families face when trying to feed their families on a limited income. Over the past three years, Egypt has experienced growing food insecurity due to economic challenges. Food costs account for more than 50% of poor families’ expenses, making it difficult for them to purchase adequate amounts of nutritious foods. As a result, malnutrition rates have risen especially for children between 6 months and 5 years of age.

“This increase in food insecurity, malnutrition and poverty rates has not happened overnight, during this year or even during the past year. People’s inability to have adequate and nutritious food is largely attributed to rising poverty rates and a succession of crises from 2005 — including the avian influenza epidemic in 2006, the food, fuel and financial crises of 2007–09 and a challenging macroeconomic context in recent years” explained Bordignon at the WFP.

Creative Commons Love: Victor on Flickr.com

Written by Amanda Lubit