Education, Careers & Professional News
School Feeding Programme in Srilanka Curbs Malnutrition and Boost education In Tsunami affected areas.
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
World Vision together with World Food Programme and the government of Sri Lanka has signed a Memorandum of Understanding to implement an emergency school feeding programme. The programme will target 171 schools in eight districts affected by the tsunami.
This will be mainly to meet the immediate nutritional needs of school-going children between 5-10 years of age according to Dr. Debebe Dawit, Regional Food Aid Specialist for Tsunami Response in Sri Lanka.
Through this programme, 40,000 children across the island will benefit from a take-home ration pack containing Corn Soya Blend (CSB) flour, sugar and oil, which will be provided to their parents. The mothers of the beneficiary children will receive education on the nutritional value of the rations and a cooking demonstration on how to prepare the CSB flour before it is distributed. Twenty-two trained nutritionists will be deployed to the respective areas for this task.
Prior to the first delivery of food commodities, World Vision staff will meet with school principals to ensure that the distribution centres are secure and located within the school. WV food monitors will conduct on-site monitoring at each school and school heads will provide WV with a beneficiary list.
The Feeding Programme will be carried out over two months. Each child will receive six kilograms of CSB flour, 500 grams of sugar and 500 ml of oil.
The overall goal of the programme is to improve enrollment, attendance and performance of primary school children. The school feeding programme is one of several interventions that have proved useful to address some of the nutrition and health issues of school-going children.
The programme will be implemented in the districts of Battticaloa, Trincomalee, Jaffna, Mullaitivu, Ampara, Galle, Matara and Hambantota.