What plans are there for making school meals available for all children?
This year, WFP will be running its school feeding program under its new Emergency School Feeding (ESF) strategy. WFP will be working to determine how many schools lack a school feeding program to get a better idea of where and how the program can be expanded. To encourage school enrollment and attendance among girls, WFP in Somalia introduced a take-home ration program. Girls who attend school regularly will receive a take-home ration of vegetable oil to share with their families. Communities have been encouraged to contribute to the school feeding program by providing meat and vegetables for meals, providing fuel or wood for cooking, contributing to the labor costs of the program, and taking responsibility for storing the food. This will enable communities to continue feeding school children when the WFP program eventually ends.
What would be the sources of funding for any expansion of the school feeding program?
Somalia remains one of the poorest countries in the world. There is no central system that governs funding for any social support sector; therefore, the country continues to depend on external aid. For the last eighteen years, schools have been supported by donors, the United Nations, and international NGOs. There are some schools that are funded by local institutions, but not many. WFP continues to support school feeding as a means of promoting basic education, with a goal of achieving the Millennium Development Goal of education for all. In addition, WFP supports the Ministry of Education and Community Education Committees (CECs) through capacity building programs to enable them to encourage their communities to send their children to school.
Somalia’s Government of National Unity was formed in Djibouti in February 2009 but is not yet operational in all parts of Somalia. Therefore, external support will remain the main source of funding for education in Somalia for the coming years.
Due to Somalia’s current crises, the majority of the funding and donor priorities are directed to emergency activities. As a result, not as much attention is given to supporting education, including the school feeding program, as it is considered a recovery activity. This has greatly impacted the expansion of the school feeding program.
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