Located off Africa, the island country of Madagascar is often victimized by natural disasters which cause food shortages. In April 2008, Cyclone Ivan struck Madagascar, and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) responded with emergency food aid.
WFP reports that “more than 70 percent of the population in Madagascar lives below the poverty line.” School feeding programs help children and their families as they attempt to break the cycle of poverty. In this interview with Nicolas Babu, School Feeding Program Officer for WFP Madagascar, we will examine this life-changing initiative.
How many children are benefiting from the WFP School feeding programs within the country?
Within the framework of its Country Program, WFP in 2007 assisted more than 60,000 pupils in 272 schools across 11 districts in the south of Madagascar – a part of the country prone to chronic drought and food insecurity. Thanks to funding from the Ministry of National Education (MNE) of Madagascar, WFP is currently expanding its program in order to reach 100% of the pupils in five of those districts– all of which suffer from low school enrollment rates and high levels of food insecurity. We anticipate that this expansion will enable WFP to reach, during the school year 2008/2009, a total of 180,000 pupils from 1,110 schools across these 11 school districts in southern Madagascar.
In addition, in April 2008, WFP intervened in the aftermath of Cyclone Ivan to give emergency assistance to 4,700 pupils on the hard-hit east coast of Madagascar. About nine metric tons of High Energy Biscuits were distributed to children during these emergency operations.
Discuss what effect the meals have on the children in terms of school attendance, performance, and nutrition.
School feeding acts as an incentive to persuade parents to enroll and keep their children in school. Moreover, by reducing immediate hunger, school feeding improves the ability of students to focus and concentrate on their studies. Overall, school feeding activities enhance the quality of education through better attendance and educational performance, as well as reducing school dropout rates.
Also, because drought is a chronic problem in the south of Madagascar, meals provided through school feeding programs provide a critical source of nutrition, and ensure the continuity of school attendance. In other words, we can help keep pupils in school during these crises. In such situations, school meals and education can also help restore a sense of normality despite the difficult situation.
What plans are there for making school meals available for all children?
Article comments
1 - Marcia Neil
If it can happen on Japan and the UK, as well as periodically on Vieques in the Caribbean Sea where whale sharks breed, can it happen on Madasgascar? These kinds of concerns cause a population to burn energy at an abnormal rate, such that "feeding programs" may simply increase the anxiety and worries that cause vulnerability among other species and lowered resistance to business-domain interests. The fact that Komodo Dragons congregate in Madagascar environs piques such interests in ways that can make such regions targets of offended wildlife linkages.