If there is to be any hope of a peaceful future in the war-torn region of Sudan, food and education must be provided for all children. Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is helping the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) provide school meals in Darfur, but there is far more to this work than delivering the food.
Kitchens, food storage rooms, and water tanks are some of the facilities needed to prepare these school meals. This is a significant challenge with schools located in refugee camps or in remote, rural areas. Hani El-Mahdi, head of programming in Northern Sudan, discusses the role of Catholic Relief Services in supporting school feeding in Darfur.
What type of construction did the schools need so they could take part in the WFP school feeding program?
Catholic Relief Services has been building permanent kitchens and food storage rooms to enable schools in West Darfur to participate in the WFP school feeding program. This activity is necessary to enable the schools to safely store food and cooking equipment, as many of the schools are in camps for internally displaced people (IDP) and in remote rural areas up the northern corridor of West Darfur, which runs north of El Geneina along the Sudan-Chad border for about 85 miles.
Catholic Relief Services is also installing water tanks in targeted schools so school cooks have easy access to water for cooking and cleaning. Hand-washing facilities are also being constructed.
In addition, Catholic Relief Services collaborated with the State Department of Forestry and Ministry of Education to train the school cooks in the construction and maintenance of fuel-efficient stoves made from mud and cow dung. These stoves use significantly less firewood and cook food much faster compared to conventional mud-and-brick stoves.
This activity promotes environment-friendly activities both in the schools and in the community, as the cooks have built small stoves for their homes and are promoting use of these stoves among their neighbors.
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