Tomorrow today; 2010 - unesdoc - Unesco

Sustainable school feedingNancy Walters, Chief, School Feeding Policy Division, World Food ProgrammeCurrently an estimated 66 million children attend schoolhungry – about 40 per cent of them in Africa – andan additional 72 million children in this age group donot attend school at all. As the leading humanitarian agencyin the fight against hunger, the World Food Programme (WFP)has been supporting educational development through schoolfeeding programmes for over 45 years. Through partnershipswith both the public and private sector, 22 million children in63 countries benefited from WFP’s school feeding programmesin 2009. Of these, 10.5 million were in 37 African countries.Food security and nutrition play an important role in educationaldevelopment. School feeding offers an incentive for households tosend their children to school to receive an education, while alsoreducing short-term hunger and improving their nutrition andhealth. Evidence has shown that where there is a social safety netthat addresses food security and nutrition to school children, accessto education increases and educational performance improves.Over the last year, WFP has revised its school feeding policy tofocus on sustainability. In the past, WFP very often implementedschool feeding as a stand-alone intervention, with little planningfor national ownership. WFP, governments and other partnershave recognized the potential of school feeding as part of a holisticnational development strategy and have shifted the school feedingparadigm to focus on sustainability and national ownership. Since2008, the World Bank and WFP have been working together to helpcounties transition and develop the capacity for sustainable schoolfeeding programmes. A 2009 joint publication by the World Bankand WFP, titled Rethinking School Feeding: Social Safety Nets, ChildDevelopment, and the Education Sector, provides a road map for countriesof the costs and benefits of implementing sustainable schoolfeeding programmes, in the context of a productive safety net and afiscally sustainable investment in human capital.The strength of school feeding as an educational tool is its longterminvestment in human capital by achieving multi-sector benefitsin nutrition, education, value transfer, gender equality and widersocio-economic gains. By investing in the health and nutrition ofschool-age children, a country can increase the human capital of itsyounger generation and achieve sustainable economic growth andhuman development. The combination of multiple benefits with theshift in the school feeding paradigm makes significant contributionsin building sustainability.The multiple benefits of sustainable school feedingSchool feeding programmes are much more than simply giving foodto people in need. Solid empirical evidence of the impact of schoolfeeding programmes on educational outcomes proves that schoolfeeding increases school enrolment and attendance by reducingschool drop-out rates. 1,2,3 There is also significant evidence thatproves school feeding goes beyond the educationaloutcomes, producing an array of benefits across disciplines.The productive safety-net function providedthrough its multiple benefits in education, nutritionand gender is well known. Innovative school feedingprogrammes provide multi-sector benefits such aseducation, improved environment, gender equality,food security, poverty alleviation, nutrition and health– in one single intervention. School feeding is an investmentin human capital, which yields returns in terms ofglobal stability and building a sustainable world.Food security and nutrition: enabling aspects of educationFood security and nutrition play critical roles in educationand human development. Empirical evidenceshows that good nutrition is a prerequisite for effectivelearning. The interdependent linkages betweencaloric intake, nutrition and cognitive and physicaldevelopment are overwhelming. School feeding is anintervention that enhances the diet and increases theenergy available to a child. It targets micronutrientdeficiencies, which are widespread among school-agechildren in developing countries and which increasesusceptibility to infection, leading to absenteeismand impairing learning capacity and cognition. 4,5,6,7Improving micronutrient status through food fortificationor micronutrient powders, particularly ofiron, B-vitamins, vitamin A and iodine, contributesdirectly to enhanced cognition and learning capacity.Recent studies in Kenya and Uganda proved that bothin-school meals and take-home rations (THR) reduceanaemia prevalence. 8,9There exists a large body of literature that demonstratesa systematic link between physical trauma andspecific cognitive and learning deficits. 10 For instance,stunting, which is typically caused by malnutrition andinsufficient caloric intake, has been found to be associatedwith reduced cognitive skills and slower progressin school as a child, as well as reduced earnings as anadult. 11 Food and nutrition security are the key ingredientsor even the enabling aspects of educationaldevelopment. Nutritious foods provide children withthe capability to function in the classroom.Gender, orphans and vulnerable childrenIt has been proved that school feeding contributes toimproved education for girls, as both in-school mealsand THR are effective in targeting gender objectives.This is particularly useful in boosting girls’ enrolment[ 34 ]