School Priorities - SNV

Community Participation
Hungry students make for poor learners. That’s the conclusion six
districts—Kyankwanzi, Kiboga, Rakai, Butambala, Gomba and Mpigi—
came to with SNV’s help.
“We have been
empowered on
our roles by SNV
because it is
better to teach
someone how to
catch fish than to
give him fish.”
In 2009 and 2010 SNV held “multi-stakeholder platforms” (MSPs)
in those districts, comprehensive meetings where everyone with an
interest in education—headteachers, school management committees,
parents, religious leaders, district education officers and other district
and subcounty technical officers—could talk about the state of schools
and collectively seek out solutions. Everyone agreed that a lack of school
lunch was at least partly responsible for poor pupil performance.
To be sure, there were other problems. For one, parents were not
involved in school activities, perhaps because they did not know what
their role in the education system was. Indeed, few stakeholders knew
what was expected of them. The different messages about school lunch
provision being passed from politicians and government officials to
parents and communities often conflict with the 2008 Education Act,
sowing confusing. These challenges are interconnected. With parents
and schools disagreeing as to who was responsible for school lunches,
the solution to school lunches had to comprehensively address the
failures of the parent-school relationship.
In this spirit, SNV worked through local capacity builders (LCBs) to
carry out a baseline survey on the status of student feeding and the
level of parent participation in 60 schools throughout the six districts.
The results validated the assertions that school lunches should be a
primary focus. The LCBs then held dialogue meetings with stakeholders
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